




















Mia 









CHRISTMAS STORIES 





COPYRIGHT, 1913. BY FREDERICK A. STOKES COMPANY 


‘HURRAH! HERE’S MRS. WTLETAAri’ CRIED 


JOHNNY”— 40S 


©CI.K 6424;5 









Illustrations Copyrighted, 1913, by 
Frederick A. Stokes Company 



September, 1913 






S 


^CONTENTS 

A CHRISTMAS CAROL 

PAGE 

Stave One: Marley's Ghost 3 

Stave Two: The First of the Three Spirits . . 21 

Stave Three: The Second of the Three Spirits . 37 

Stave Four: The Last of the Spirits 58 

Stave Five: The End of It 72 

THE CHIMES 

First Quarter 81 

Second Quarter 103 

Third Quarter 122 

Fourth Quarter 142 

THE CRICKET ON THE HEARTH 

Chirp the First 165 

Chirp the Second 190 

Chirp the Third 218 

THE BATTLE OF LIFE 

Part the First 251 

Part the Second 273 

Part the Third 305 

THE HAUNTED MAN AND THE GHOST’S BARGAIN 

I The Gift Bestowed 333 

H The Gift Diffused 357 

III The Gift Reversed 396 


ILLUSTRATIONS 


“ ‘Hurrah! Here’s Mrs. William!’ cried Johnny” Frontispiece 

FACING 

PAGE 


“Not a knocker, but Marley’s face ” 12 

“ ‘ God bless us every one ! ’ said Tiny Tim ” . . . . 48 

“ The Spirit stood among the graves, and pointed down 
to One 70 

“ Tt’s I. Your uncle Scrooge. I have come to dinner ’ ” 100 

“ ‘ To have a Cricket on the Hearth, is the luckiest thing 

in all the world ! ’ ” 140 

Caleb Plummer and his blind daughter 190 

Caleb and Tilly Slowboy dancing 248 

Snitchey and Craggs 268 

“ ‘ Oh, Marion, Marion ! ’” 322 

“ ‘ Here again,’ replied the Phantom ” 348 

















A CHRISTMAS CAROL 

IN PROSE 

BEING 

A GHOST STORY OF CHRISTMAS 


1 




A CHRISTMAS CAROL 


STAVE ONE 
marley's ghost 

M ARLEY was dead: to begin with. There is no doubt 
whatever about that. The register of his burial was 
signed by the clergyman, the clerk, the undertaker, and the 
chief mourner. Scrooge signed it: and Scrooge’s name was 
good upon ’Change, for anything he chose to put his hand to. 
Old Marley was as dead as a door-nail. 

Mind ! I don’t mean to say that I know, of my own knowl- 
edge, what there is particularly dead about a door-nail. I 
might have been inclined, myself, to regard a coffin-nail as the 
deadest piece of ironmongery in the trade. But the wisdom 
of our ancestors is in the simile; and my unhallowed hands 
shall not disturb it, or the Country’s done for. You will 
therefore permit me to repeat, emphatically, that Marley was 
as dead as a door-nail. 

Scrooge knew he was dead? Of course he did. How 
could it be otherwise? Scrooge and he were partners for I 
don’t know how many years. Scrooge was his sole executor, 
his sole administrator, his sole assign, his sole residuary lega- 
tee, his sole friend and sole mourner. And even Scrooge 
was not so dreadfully cut up by the sad event, but that he 
was an excellent man of business on the very day of the 
funeral, and solemnised it with an undoubted bargain. 

The mention of Marley’s funeral brings me back to the 
point I started from. There is no doubt that Marley was 
dead. This must be distinctly understood, or nothing wonder- 
ful can come of the story I am going to relate. If we were 
not perfectly convinced that Hamlet’s father died before the 
play began, there would be nothing more remarkable in his 
taking a stroll at night, in an easterly wind, upon his own 

3 


4 


A CHRISTMAS CAROL 


ramparts, than there would be in any other middle-aged gentle- 
man rashly turning out after dark in a breezy spot — say Saint 
Paul’s Churchyard for instance — literally to astonish his son’s 
weak mind. 

Scrooge never painted out Old Marley’s name. There 
it stood, years afterwards, above the warehouse door : 
Scrooge and Marley. The firm was known as Scrooge and 
Marley. Sometimes people new to the business called Scrooge 
Scrooge, and sometimes Marley, but he answered to both 
names : it was all the same to him. 

Oh! But he was a tight-fisted hand at the grindstone, 
Scrooge! a squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutch- 
ing, covetous, old sinner! Hard and sharp as flint, from 
which no steel had ever struck out generous fire; secret, and 
self-contained, and solitary as an oyster. The cold within 
him froze his old features, nipped his pointed nose, shrivelled 
his cheek, stiffened his gait; made his eyes red, his thin lips 
blue; and spoke out shrewdly in his grating voice. A frosty 
rime was on his head, and on his eyebrows, and his wiry chin. 
He carried his own low temperature always about with him; 
he iced his office in the dog-days; and didn’t thaw it one 
degree at Christmas. 

External heat and cold had little influence on Scrooge. 
No warmth could warm, nor wintry weather chill him. No 
wind that blew was bitterer than he, no falling snow was 
more intent upon its purpose, no pelting rain less open to 
entreaty. Foul weather didn’t know where to have him. 
The heaviest rain, and snow, and hail, and sleet, could 
boast of the advantage over him in only one respect. They 
often “ came down ” handsomely, and Scrooge never did. 

Nobody ever stopped him in the street to say, with glad- 
some looks, My dear Scrooge, how are you ? When will 
you come to see me?” No beggars implored him to bestow 
a trifle, no children asked him what it was o’clock, no man 
or woman ever once in all his life inquired the way to such 
and such a place, of Scrooge. Even the blind men’s dogs 
appeared to know him; and when they saw him coming on, 
would tug their owners into doorways and up courts; and 
then would wag their tails as though they said, ‘‘No eye at 
all is better than an evil eye, dark master ! ” 


A CHRISTMAS CAROL 


5 

But what did Scrooge care? It was the very thing he 

liked. To edge his way along the crowded path of life, 

warning all human sympathy to keep its distance, was what 
the knowing ones call “ nuts ” to Scrooge. 

Once upon a time — of all the good days in the year, on 
Christmas Eve — old Scrooge sat busy in his counting-house. 
It was cold, bleak, biting weather: foggy withal: and he 
could hear the people in the court outside go wheezing up 
and down, beating their hands upon their breasts, and stamp- 
ing their feet upon the pavement-stones to warm them. The 
City clocks had only just gone three, but it was quite dark 

already: it had not been light all day: and candles were 

flaring in the windows of the neighbouring offices, like 
ruddy smears upon the palpable brown air. The fog came 
pouring in at every chink and keyhole, and was so dense 
without, that although the court was of the narrowest, the 
houses opposite were mere phantoms. To see the dingy cloud 
come drooping down, obscuring everything, one might have 
thought that Nature lived hard by, and was brewing on a large 
scale. 

The door of Scrooge’s counting-house was open that he 
might keep his eye upon his clerk, who in a dismal little cell 
beyond, a sort of tank, was copying letters. Scrooge had 
a very small fire, but the clerk’s fire was so very much smaller 
that it looked like one coal. But he couldn’t replenish it, for 
Scrooge kept the coal-box in his own room; and so surely as 
the clerk came in with the shovel, the master predicted that 
it would be necessary for them to part. Wherefore the 
clerk put on his white comforter, and tried to warm himself 
at the candle; in which effort, not being a man of a strong 
imagination, he failed. 

“ A merry Christmas, uncle ! God save you ! ” cried a 
cheerful voice. It was the voice of Scrooge’s nephew, who 
came upon him so quickly that this was the first intimation 
he had of his approach. 

''Bah!” said Scrooge, "Humbug!” 

He had so heated himself with rapid walking in the fog 
and frost, this nephew of Scrooge’s, that he was all in a 
glow; his face was ruddy and handsome; his eyes sparkled, 
and his breath smoked again. 


6 


A CHRISTMAS CAROL 


Christmas a humbug, uncle ! ” said Scrooge’s nephew. 
“ You don’t mean that, I am sure.” 

“ I do,” said Scrooge. “ Merry Christmas ! What right 
have you to be merry? What reason have you to be merry? 
You’re poor enough.” 

Come, then,” returned the nephew gaily. “ What right 
have you to be dismal ? What reason have you to be morose ? 
You’re rich enough.” 

Scrooge having no better answer ready on the spur of the 
moment, said, Bah ! ” again ; and followed it up with Hum- 
bug.” 

“ Don’t be cross, uncle,” said the nephew. 

“ What else can I be,” returned the uncle, “ when I live 
in such a world of fools as this? Merry Christmas! Out 
upon merry Christmas I What’s Christmas time to you but 
a time for paying bills without money; a time for finding 
yourself a year older, but not an hour richer; a time for 
balancing your books and having every item in ’em through 
a round dozen of months presented dead against you? If 
I could work my will,” said Scrooge, indignantly, every 
idiot who goes about with ‘ Merry Christmas,’ on his lips, 
should be boiled with his own pudding, and buried with a 
stake of holly through his heart. He should 1 ” 

Uncle ! ” pleaded the nephew. 

“Nephew!” returned the uncle, sternly, “keep Christmas 
in your own way, and let me keep it in mine.” 

“ Keep it ! ” repeated Scrooge’s nephew. “ But you don’t 
keep it.” 

“ Let me leave it alone, then,” said Scrooge. “ Much 
good may it do you ! Much good it has ever done you ! ” 

“ There are many things from which I might have de- 
rived good, by which I have not profited, I dare say,” re- 
turned the nephew : “ Christmas among the rest. But I 
am sure I have always thought of Christmas time, when it 
has come round — apart from the veneration due to its sacred 
name and origin, if anything belonging to it can be apart 
from that — as a good time: a kind, forgiving, charitable, 
pleasant time: the only time I know of, in the long calendar 
of the year, when men and women seem by one consent to 
open their shut-up hearts freely, and to think of people below 


A CHRISTMAS CAROL 


7 

them as if they really were fellow-passengers to the grave, 
and not another race of creatures bound on other journeys. 
And therefore, uncle, though it has never put a scrap of gold 
or silver in my pocket, I believe that it has done me good, 
and will do me good ; and I say, God bless it ! ” 

The clerk in the Tank involuntarily applauded: becoming 
immediately sensible of the impropriety, he poked the fire, 
and extinguished the last frail spark for ever. 

“ Let me hear another sound from you,'' said Scrooge, 
‘‘ and you’ll keep your Christmas by losing your situa- 
tion. You’re quite a powerful speaker, Sir,” he added, turn- 
ing to his nephew. ‘‘ I wonder you don’t go into Parlia- 
ment.” 

“ Don’t be angry, uncle. Come ! Dine with us to-mor- 
row.” 

Scrooge said that he would see him — yes, indeed he 
did. He went the whole length of the expression and said 
that he would see him in that extremity first. 

But why ? ” cried Scrooge’s nephew. Why ? ” 

“ Why did you get married ? ” said Scrooge. 

‘‘ Because I fell in love.” 

“ Because you fell in love ! ” growled Scrooge, as if that 
were the only one thing in the world more ridiculous than 
a merry Christmas. “ Good afternoon ! ” 

“ Nay, uncle, but you never came to see me before that 
happened. Why give it as a reason for not coming now ? ” 

‘‘ Good afternoon,” said Scrooge. 

“ I want nothing from you ; I ask nothing of you ; why 
cannot we be friends?” 

‘‘ Good afternoon,” said Scrooge. 

“ I am sorry, with all my heart, to find you so resolute. 
We have never had any quarrel, to which I have been a 
party. But I have made the trial in homage to Christmas, 
and I’ll keep my Christmas humour to the last. So a Merry 
Christmas, uncle ! ” 

“ Good afternoon ! ” said Scrooge. 

“And a Happy New Year!” 

“ Good afternoon I ” said Scrooge. 

Plis nephew left the room without an angry word, not- 
witbstodlng. He stopped at the outer door to bestow the 


8 


A CHRISTMAS CAROL 


greetings of the season on the clerk, who, cold as he was, 
was warmer than Scrooge; for he returned them cordially. 

“ There's another fellow," muttered Scrooge ; who over- 
heard him: ‘'my clerk, with fifteen shillings a week, and 
a wife and family, talking about a merry Christmas. I’ll re- 
tire to Bedlam." 

This lunatic, in letting Scrooge’s nephew out, had let 
two other people in. They were portly gentlemen, pleasant 
to behold, and now stood, with their hats off, in Scrooge’s 
office. They had books and papers in their hands, and bowed 
to him. 

“ Scrooge and Marley’s, I believe," said one of the gentle- 
men, referring to his list. “ Have I the pleasure of addressing 
Mr. Scrooge, or Mr. Marley ? " 

“ Mr. Marley has been dead these seven years," Scrooge 
replied. “ He died seven years ago, this very night." 

“ We have no doubt his liberality is well represented by 
his surviving partner," said the gentleman, presenting his 
credentials. 

It certainly was; for they had been two kindred spirits. 
At the ominous word “ liberality," Scrooge frowned, and 
shook his head, and handed the credentials back. 

“At this festive season of the year, Mr. Scrooge," said 
the gentleman, taking up a pen, “ it is more than usually 
desirable that we should make some slight provision for the 
poor and destitute, who suffer greatly at the present time. 
Many thousands are in want of common necessaries ; 
hundreds of thousands are in want of common comforts, 
Sir." 

“ Are there no prisons ? " asked Scrooge. 

“ Plenty of prisons," said the gentleman, laying down the 
pen again. 

“ And the Union workhouses ? ” demanded Scrooge. 
“Are they still in operation?" 

“ They are. Still," returned the gentleman, “ I wish I 
could say they were not." 

“ The Treadmill and the Poor Law are in full vigour, then? " 
said Scrooge. 

“ Both very busy, Sir." 

“Oh! I was afraid, from what you said at first, that 


A CHRISTMAS CAROL 


9 

something had occurred to stop them in their useful course/' 
said Scrooge. “ I’m very glad to hear it.” 

Under the impression that they scarcely furnish Christian 
cheer of mind or body to the multitude,” returned the gen- 
tleman, “ a few of us are endeavouring to raise a fund to 
buy the Poor some meat and drink, and means of warmth. 
We choose this time, because it is a time, of all others, when 
Want is keenly felt, and Abundance rejoices. What shall 1 
put you down for ? ” 

“Nothing!” Scrooge replied. 

“You wish to be anonymous?” 

“ I wish to be left alone,” said Scrooge. “ Since you ask 
me what I wish, gentlemen, that is my answer. I don’t make 
merry myself at Christmas, and I can’t afford to make idle 
people merry. I help to support the establishments I have 
mentioned: they cost enough: and those who are badly off 
must go there.” 

“ Many can’t go there ; and many would rather die.” 

“ If they would rather die,” said Scrooge, “ they had better 
do it, and decrease the surplus population. Besides— excuse 
me — I don’t know that.” 

“ But you might know it,” observed the gentleman. 

“ It’s not my business,” Scrooge returned. “ It’s enough 
for a man to understand his own business, and not to in- 
terfere with other people’s. Mine occupies me constantly. 
Good afternoon, gentlemen 1 ” 

Seeing clearly that it would be useless to pursue their 
point, the gentlemen withdrew. Scrooge resumed his labours 
with an improved opinion of himself, and in more facetious 
temper than was usual with him. 

Meanwhile the fog and darkness thickened so, that the 
people ran about with flaring links, proffering their services 
to go before horses in carriages, and conduct them on their 
way. The ancient tower of a church, whose gruff old bell 
was always peeping slily down at Scrooge out of a gothic 
window in the wall, became invisible, and struck the hours 
and quarters in the clouds, with tremulous vibrations after- 
wards as if its teeth were chattering in its frozen head up 
there. The cold became intense. In the main street at the 
corner of the court, some labourers were repairing the gas- 


lO 


A CHRISTMAS CAROL 


pipes, and had lighted a great fire in a brazier, round which 
a party of ragged men and boys were gathered: warming 
their hands and winking their eyes before the blaze in rapture. 
The water-plug being left in solitude, its overflowings sul- 
lenly congealed, and turned to misanthropic ice. The bright- 
ness of the shops where holly sprigs and berries crackled in 
the lamp heat of the windows, made pale faces ruddy as they 
passed. Poulterers’ and grocers’ trades became a splendid 
joke: a glorious pageant, with which it was next to impossible 
to believe that such dull principles as bargain and sales had 
anything to do. The Lord Mayor, in the stronghold of the 
mighty Mansion House, gave orders to his fifty cooks and 
butlers to keep Christmas as a Lord Mayor’s household 
should; and even the little tailor, whom he had fined five 
shillings on the previous Monday for being drunk and blood- 
thirsty in the streets, stirred up to-morrow’s pudding in his 
garret, while his lean wife and the baby sallied out to buy 
the beef. 

Foggier yet, and colder! Piercing, searching, biting cold. 
If the good Saint Dunstan had but nipped the Evil Spirit’s 
nose with a touch of such weather as that, instead of using 
his familiar weapons, then indeed he would have roared to 
lusty purpose. The owner of one scant young nose, gnawed 
and mumbled by the hungry cold as bones are gnawed by 
dogs, stooped down at Scrooge’s keyhole to regale him with 
a Christmas carol; but at the first sound of 

“ God bless ycm, merry gentleman ! 

May nothing you dismay I ” 

Scrooge seized the ruler with such energy of action, that the 
singer fled in terror, leaving the keyhole to the fog and even 
more congenial frost. 

At length the hour of shutting up the counting-house ar- 
rived. With an ill-will Scrooge dismounted from his stool, 
and tacitly admitted the fact to the expectant clerk in the 
Tank, who instantly snuffed his candle out, and put on his 
hat. 

You’ll want all day to-morrow, I suppose? ” said Scrooge. 

“If quite convenient, Sir.” 

“ It’s not convenient,” said Scrooge, “ and it’s not fair. If 


A CHRISTMAS CAROL ii 

I was to stop half-a-crown for it, you’d think yourself ill-used, 
I’ll be bound ? ” 

The clerk smiled faintly. 

“ And yet,” said Scrooge, you don’t think me ill-used, 
when I pay a day’s wages for no work.” 

The clerk observed that it was only once a year. 

“ A poor excuse for picking a man’s pocket every twenty- 
fifth of December ! ” said Scrooge, buttoning his great-coat to 
the chin. But I suppose you must have the whole day. Be 
here all the earlier next morning ! ” 

The clerk promised that he would ; and Scrooge walked out 
with a growl. The office was closed in a twinkling and the 
clerk, with the long ends of his white comforter dangling be- 
low his waist (for he boasted no great-coat), went down a 
slide on Cornhill, at the end of a lane of boys, twenty times, in 
honour of its being Christmas Eve, and then ran home to 
Camden Town as hard as he could pelt, to play at blindman’s- 
buffi. 

Scrooge took his melancholy dinner in his usual melancholy 
tavern; and having read all the newspapers, and beguiled the 
rest of the evening with his banker’s-book, went home to bed. 
He lived in chambers which had once belonged to his deceased 
partner. They were a gloomy suite of rooms, in a lowering 
pile of building up a yard, where it had so little business to be, 
that one could scarcely help fancying it must have run there 
when it was a young house, playing at hide-and-seek with 
other houses, and have forgotten the way out again. It was 
old enough now, and dreary enough, for nobody lived in it but 
Scrooge, the other rooms being all let out as offices. The yard 
was so dark that even Scrooge, who knew its every stone, was 
fain to grope with his hands. The fog and frost so hung about 
the black old gateway of the house, that it seemed as if 
the Genius of the Weather sat in mournful meditation on the 
threshold. 

Now, it is a fact, that there was nothing at all particular 
about the knocker on the door, except that it was very large. 
It is also a fact, that Scrooge had seen it, night and morning, 
during his whole residence in that place ; also that Scrooge had 
as little of what is called fancy about him as any man in the 
City of London, even including — which is a bold word — the 


12 


A CHRISTMAS CAROL 


corporation, aldermen, and livery. Let it also be borne in mind 
that Scrooge had not bestowed one thought on Marley, since 
his last mention of his seven-years’ dead partner that afternoon. 
And then let any man explain to me, if he can, how it happened 
that Scrooge, having his key in the lock of the door, saw in the 
knocker, without its undergoing any immediate process of 
change : not a knocker, but Marley’s face. 

Marley’s face. It was not in impenetrable shadow as the 
other objects in the yard were, but had a dismal light about 
it, like a bad lobster in a dark cellar. It was not angry or fe- 
rocious, but looked at Scrooge as Marley used to look: with 
ghostly spectacles turned up on its ghostly forehead. The 
hair was curiously stirred, as if by breath or hot air; and, 
though the eyes were wide open, they were perfectly motion- 
less. That, and its livid colour, made it horrible ; but its horror 
seemed to be in spite of the face and beyond its control, rather 
than a part of its own expression. 

As Scrooge looked fixedly at this phenomenon, it was a 
knocker again. 

To say that he was not startled, or that his blood was not 
conscious of a terrible sensation to which it had been a 
stranger from infancy, would be untrue. But he put his 
hand upon the key he had relinquished, turned it sturdily, 
walked in, and lighted his candle. 

He did pause, with a moment’s irresolution, before he shut 
the door; and he did look cautiously behind it first, as if he 
half expected to be terrified with the sight of Marley’s pigtail 
sticking out into the hall. But there was nothing on the back 
of the door, except the screws and nuts that held the knocker- 
on ; so he said “ Pooh, pooh ! ” and closed it with a bang. 

The sound resounded through the house like thunder. 
Every room above, and every cask in the wine-merchant’s 
cellars below, appeared to have a separate peal of echoes of 
its own. Scrooge was not a man to be frightened by echoes. 

He fastened the door, and walked across the hall, and up the 
stairs : slowly too : trimming his candle as he went. 

You may talk vaguely about driving a coach-and-six up 
a good old flight of stairs, or through a bad young Act of 
Parliament ; but I mean to say you might have got a hearse up 
that staircase, and taken it broadwise, with the splinter-bar 



COPYRIGHT, 19)3, BY FREDERICK A. STOKES COMPANY 


“NOT A KNOCKER, 


BVT ^lARLEY’S FACE ”— 12 


I 





A CHRISTMAS CAROL 


13 

towards the wall, and the door towards the balustrades: and 
done it easy. There was plenty of width for that, and room 
to spare; which is perhaps the reason why Scrooge thought 
he saw a locomotive hearse going on before him in the gloom. 
Half-a-dozen gas-lamps out of the street wouldn’t have lighted 
the entry too well, so you may suppose that it was pretty dark 
with Scrooge’s dip. 

Up Scrooge went, not caring a button for that : darkness is 
cheap, and Scrooge liked it. But before he shut his heavy 
door, he walked through his rooms to see that all was right. 
He had just enough recollection of the face to desire to do 
that. 

Sitting-room, bedroom, lumber-room. All as they should 
be. Nobody under the table, nobody under the sofa ; a small 
fire in the grate ; spoon and basin ready ; and the little sauce- 
pan of gruel (Scrooge had a cold in his head) upon the hob. 
Nobody under the bed; nobody in the closet; nobody in his 
dressing-gown, which was hanging up in a suspicious attitude 
against the wall. Lumber-room as usual. Old fire-guard, 
old shoes, two fish-baskets, washing-stand on three legs, and 
a poker. 

Quite satisfied, he closed his door, and locked himself in; 
double-locked himself in, which was not his custom. Thus 
secured against surprise, he took off his cravat; put on his 
dressing-gown and slippers, and his nightcap ; and sat down be- 
fore the fire to take his gruel. 

It was a very low fire indeed ; nothing on such a bitter night. 
He was obliged to sit close to it, and brood over it, before he 
could extract the least sensation of warmth from such a hand- 
ful of fuel. The fireplace was an old one, built by some Dutch 
merchant long ago, and paved all round with quaint Dutch 
tiles, designed to illustrate the Scriptures. There were Cains 
and Abels, Pharaoh’s daughters, queens of Sheba, Angelic mes- 
sengers descending through the air on clouds like feather-beds, 
Abrahams, Belshazzars, Apostles putting off to sea in butter- 
boats, hundreds of figures, to attract his thoughts ; and yet that 
face of Marley, seven years dead, came like the ancient 
Prophet’s rod, and swallowed up the whole. If each smooth 
tile had been a blank at first, with power to shape some pic- 
ture on its surface from the disjointed fragments of his 


14 A CHRISTMAS CAROL 

thoughts, there would have been a copy of old Marley’s head 
on every one. 

“ Humbug ! said Scrooge ; and walked across the room. 

After several turns, he sat down again. As he threw his 
head back in the chair, his glance happened to rest upon a 
bell, a disused bell, that hung in the room, and communicated 
for some purpose now forgotten with a chamber in the high- 
est story of the building. It was with great astonishment, 
and with a strange, inexplicable dread, that as he looked, he 
saw this bell begin to swing. It swung so softly in the outset 
that it scarcely made a sound ; but soon it rang out loudly, and 
so did every bell in the house. 

This might have lasted half a minute, or a minute, but it 
seemed an hour. The bells ceased as they had begun, to- 
gether. They were succeeded by a clanking noise, deep down 
below; as if some person were dragging a heavy chain over 
the casks in the wine-merchant’s cellar. Scrooge then re- 
membered to have heard that ghosts in haunted houses were 
described as dragging chains. 

The cellar-door flew open with a booming sound, and then 
he heard the noise much louder, on the floors below ; then com- 
ing up the stairs ; then coming straight towards his door. 

'' It’s humbug still ! ” said Scrooge. I won’t believe it.” 

His colour changed though, when, without a pause, it came 
on through the heavy door, and passed into the room before 
his eyes. Upon its coming in, the dying flame leaped up, as 
though it cried “ I know him ! Marley’s Ghost ! ” and fell 
again. 

The same face : the very same. Marley in his pigtail, usual 
waistcoat, tights and boots; the tassels on the latter bristling, 
like his pigtail, and his coat-skirts, and the hair upon his head. 
The chain he drew was clasped about his middle. It was long, 
and wound about him like a tail ; and it was made ( for Scrooge 
observed it closely) of cash-boxes, keys, padlocks, ledgers, 
deeds, and heavy purses wrought in steel. His body was 
transparent ; so that Scrooge, observing him, and looking 
through his waistcoat, could see the two buttons on his coat 
behind. 

Scrooge had often heard it said that Marley had no bowels, 
but he had never believed it until now. 


A CHRISTMAS CAROL 


15 

No, nor did he believe it even now. Though he looked the 
phantom through and through, and saw it standing before 
him ; though he felt the chilling influence of its deathcold 
eyes; and marked the very texture of the folded kerchief 
bound about its head and chin, which wrapper he had not 
observed before: he was still incredulous, and fought against 
his senses. 

“ How now ! ” said Scrooge, caustic and cold as ever. 
“ What do you want with me ? 

Much ! ” — Marley’s voice, no doubt about it. 

“ Who are you ? ” 

“ Ask me who I was/' 

“ Who were you then ? " said Scrooge, raising his voice. 

You’re particular — for a shade.” He was going to say to 
a shade,” but substituted this, as more appropriate. 

“ In life I was your partner, Jacob Marley.” 

Can you — can you sit down ? ” asked Scrooge, looking 
doubtfully at him. 

I can.” 

Do it then.” 

Scrooge asked the question, because he didn’t know whether 
a ghost so transparent might find himself in a condition to 
take a chair ; and felt that in the event of its being impossible, 
it might involve the necessity of an embarrassing explanation. 
But the Ghost sat down on the opposite side of the fireplace, as 
if he were quite used to it. 

“ You don’t believe in me,” observed the Ghost. 

‘‘ I don’t,” said Scrooge. 

“ What evidence would you have of my reality beyond that 
of your senses ? ” 

I don’t know,” said Scrooge. 

“ Why do you doubt your senses ? ” 

’ “ Because,” said Scrooge, “ a little thing affects them. A 
slight disorder of the stomach makes them cheats. You may 
be an undigested bit of beef, a blot of mustard, a crumb of 
cheese, a fragment of an underdone potato. There’s more of 
gravy than of grave about you, whatever you are ! ” 

Scrooge was not much in the habit of cracking jokes, nor 
did he feel, in his heart, by any means waggish then. The 
truth is, that he tried to be smart, as a means of distracting his 


i6 


A CHRISTMAS CAROL 


own attention, and keeping down his terror; for the spectre^s 
voice disturbed the very marrow in his bones. 

To sit, staring at those fixed, glazed eyes, in silence for a 
moment, would play, Scrooge felt, the very deuce with him. 
There was something very awful, too, in the spectre’s being 
provided with an infernal atmosphere of its own. Scrooge 
could not feel it himself, but this was clearly the case; for 
though the Ghost sat perfectly motionless, its hair, and skirts, 
and tassels, were agitated as by the hot vapour from an 
oven. 

You see this toothpick?” said Scrooge, returning quickly 
to the charge, for the reason just assigned ; and wishing, though 
it were only for a second, to divert the vision’s stony gaze 
from himself. 

I do,” replied the Ghost. 

You are not looking at it,” said Scrooge. 

“ But I see it,” said the Ghost, “ notwithstanding.” 

“ Well ! ” returned Scrooge. “ I have but to swallow this, 
and be for the rest of my days persecuted by a legion of gob- 
lins, all of my own creation. Humbug, I tell you — hum- 

bug ! ” 

At this the spirit raised a frightful cry, and shook its chain 
with such a dismal and appalling noise, that Scrooge held on 
tight to his chair, to save himself from falling in a swoon. But 
how much greater was his horror, when the phantom taking 
off the bandage round its head, as if it were too warm to wear 
indoors, its lower jaw dropped down upon its breast! 

Scrooge fell upon his knees, and clasped his hands before 
his face. 

“Mercy!” he said. “Dreadful apparition, why do you 
trouble me ? ” 

“ Man of the worldly mind ! ” replied the Ghost, “ do you 
believe in me or not ? ” 

“ I do,” said Scrooge. “ I must. But why do spirits walk 
the earth, and why do they come to me ? ” 

“ It is required of every man,” the Ghost returned, “ that 
the spirit within him should walk abroad among his fellow- 
men, and travel far and wide; and if that spirit goes not 
forth in life, it is condemned to do so after death. It is 
doomed to wander through the world — oh, woe is me! — and 


A CHRISTMAS CAROL 


17 

witness what it cannot share, but might have shared on earth, 
and turned to happiness ! ” 

Again the spectre raised a cry, and shook its chain, and 
wrung its shadowy hands. 

“ You are fettered,’’ said Scrooge, trembling. “ Tell me 
why?” 

“ I wear the chain I forged in life,” replied the Ghost. I 
made it link by link, and yard by yard ; I girded it on of my 
own free will, and of my own free will I wore it. Is its pat- 
tern strange to you?'' 

Scrooge trembled more and more. 

Or would you know,” pursued the Ghost, ‘‘ the weight 
and length of the strong coil you bear yourself? It was full 
as heavy and as long as this, seven Christmas Eves ago. You 
have laboured on it, since. It is a ponderous chain ! ” 

Scrooge glanced about him on the floor, in the expectation 
of finding himself surrounded by some fifty or sixty fathoms 
of iron cable: but he could see nothing. 

Jacob,” he said, imploringly. '' Old Jacob Marley, tell 
me more. Speak comfort to me, Jacob.” 

'' I have none to give,” the Ghost replied. “ It comes from 
other regions, Ebenezer Scrooge, and is conveyed by other 
ministers, to other kinds of men. Nor can I tell you what I 
would. A very little more, is all permitted to me. I cannot 
rest, I cannot stay, I cannot linger anywhere. My spirit never 
walked beyond our counting-house — mark me! — in life my 
spirit never roved beyond the narrow limits of our money- 
changing hole; and weary journeys lie before me! ” 

It was a habit with Scrooge, whenever he became thought- 
ful, to put his hands in his breeches-pockets. Pondering on 
what the Ghost had said, he did so now, but without lifting 
up his eyes, or getting off his knees. 

You must have been very slow about it, Jacob,” Scrooge 
observed, in a business-like manner, though with humility and 
deference. 

Slow ! ” the Ghost repeated. 

“ Seven years dead,” mused Scrooge. And travelling all 
the time ! ” 

“ The whole time,” said the Ghost. ''No rest, no peace. 
Incessant torture of remorse.” 


i8 


A CHRISTMAS CAROL 


“You travel fast?” said Scrooge. 

“ On the wings of the wind,” replied the Ghost. 

“ You might have got over a great quantity of ground in 
seven years,” said Scrooge. 

The Ghost, on hearing this, set up another cry, and clanked 
its chain so hideously in the dead silence of the night, that 
the Ward would have been justified in indicating it for a 
nuisance. 

“ Oh ! captive, bound, and double-ironed,” cried the phan- 
tom, “ not to know that ages of incessant labour, by immortal 
creatures, for this earth must pass into eternity before the 
good of which it is susceptible is all developed. Not to know 
that any Christian spirit working kindly in its little sphere, 
whatever it may be, will find its mortal life too short for its 
vast means of usefulness. Not to know that no space of re- 
gret can make amends for one life’s opportunity misused! 
Yet such was I ! Oh ! such was 1 1 ” 

“ But you were always a good man of business, Jacob,” fal- 
tered Scrooge, who now began to apply this to himself. 

“ Business ! ” cried the Ghost, wringing its hands again. 
“ Mankind was my business. The common welfare was my 
business; charity, mercy, forbearance, and benevolence, were, 
all, my business. The dealings of my trade were but a drop of 
water in the comprehensive ocean of my business ! ” 

It held up its chain at arm’s length, as if that were the cause 
of all its unavailing grief, and flung it heavily upon the ground 
again. 

“ At this time of the rolling year,” the spectre said, “ I suffer 
most. Why did I walk through crowds of fellow-beings with 
my eyes turned down, and never raise them to that blessed 
Star which led the Wise Men to a poor abode! Were there 
no poor homes to which its light would have conducted me!'' 

Scrooge was very much dismayed to hear the spectre going 
on at this rate, and began to quake exceedingly. 

“ Hear me ! ” cried the Ghost. “ My time is nearly gone.” 

“ I will,” said Scrooge. “ But don’t be hard upon me ! 
Don’t be flowery, Jacob ! Pray ! ” 

“ How it is that I appear before you in a shape that you can 
see, I may not tell. I have sat invisible beside you many and 
many a day.” 


A CHRISTMAS CAROL 


19 

It was not an agreeable idea. Scrooge shivered, and wiped 
the perspiration from his brow. 

“ That is no light part of my penance/’ pursued the Ghost. 

I am here to-night to warn you, that you have yet a chance 
and hope of escaping my fate. A chance and hope of my pro- 
curing, Ebenezer.” 

“You were always a good friend to me,” said Scrooge. 
“Thank’ee!” 

“ You will be haunted,” resumed the Ghost, “ by Three 
Spirits.” 

Scrooge’s countenance fell almost as low as the Ghost’s had 
done. 

“Is that the chance and hope you mentioned, Jacob?” he 
demanded, in a faltering voice. 

“ It is.” 

“ I — I think I’d rather not,” said Scrooge. 

“Without their visits,” said the Ghost, “you cannot hope 
to shun the path I tread. Expect the first to-morrow, when 
the bell tolls one.” 

“ Couldn’t I take ’em all at once, and have it over, Jacob ? ” 
hinted Scrooge. 

“ Expect the second on the next night at the same hour. 
The third upon the next night when the last stroke of twelve 
has ceased to vibrate. Look to see me no more; and look 
that, for your own sake, you remember what has passed be- 
tween us ! ” 

When it had said these words, the spectre took its wrapper 
from the table, and bound it round its head, as before. 
Scrooge knew this, by the smart sound its teeth made, when 
the jaws were brought together by the bandage. He ventured 
to raise his eyes again, and found his supernatural visitor con- 
fronting him in an erect attitude, with its chain wound over 
and about its arm. 

The apparition walked backward from him; and at every 
step it took, the window raised itself a little, so that when the 
spectre reached it, it was wide open. It beckoned Scrooge to 
approach, which he did. When they were within two paces of 
each other, Marley’s Ghost held up its hand, warning him to 
come no nearer. Scrooge stopped. 

Not so much in obedience, as in surprise and fear: for on 


20 


A CHRISTMAS CAROL 


the raising of the hand, he became sensible of confused noises 
in the air ; incoherent sounds of lamentation and regret ; wail- 
ings inexpressibly sorrowful and self-accusatory. The spec- 
tre, after listening for a moment, joined in the mournful dirge; 
and floated out upon the bleak, dark night. 

Scrooge followed to the window : desperate in his curiosity. 
He looked out. 

The air was filled with phantoms, wandering hither and 
thither in restless haste, and moaning as they went. Every 
one of them wore chains like Marley’s Ghost; some few (they 
might be guilty governments) were linked together; none were 
free. Many had been personally known to Scrooge in their 
lives. He had been quite familiar with one old ghost, in a 
white waistcoat, with a monstrous iron safe attached to its 
ankle, who cried piteously at being unable to assist a wretched 
woman with an infant, whom it saw below, upon a door-step. 
The misery with them all was, clearly, that they sought to 
interfere, for good, in human matters, and had lost the power 
for ever. 

Whether these creatures faded into mist, or mist enshrouded 
them, he could not tell. But they and their spirit voices faded 
together ; and the night became as it had been when he walked 
home. 

Scrooge closed the window, and examined the door by which 
the Ghost had entered. It was double-locked, as he had locked 
it with his own hands, and the bolts were undisturbed. He 
tried to say “ Humbug ! ” but stopped at the first syllable. And 
being, from the emotion he had undergone, or the fatigues of 
the day, or his glimpse of the Invisible World, or the dull 
conversation of the Ghost, or the lateness of the hour, much in 
need of repose ; went straight to bed, without undressing, and 
fell asleep upon the instant. 


A CHRISTMAS CAROL 


21 


STAVE TWO 

THE FIRST OF THE THREE SPIRITS 

W HEN Scrooge awoke, it was so dark, that looking out of 
bed, he could scarcely distinguish the transparent win- 
dow from the opaque walls of his chamber. He was en- 
deavouring to pierce the darkness with his ferret eyes, when 
the chimes of a neighbouring church struck the four quarters. 
So he listened for the hour. 

To his great astonishment the heavy bell went on from six 
to seven, and from seven to eight, and regularly up to twelve; 
then stopped. Twelve ! It was past two when he went to bed. 
The clock was wrong. An icicle must have got into the works. 
Twelve! 

He touched the spring of his repeater, to correct this most 
preposterous clock. Its rapid little pulse beat twelve; and 
stopped. 

“ Why, it isn’t possible,” said Scrooge, that I can have 
slept through a whole day and far into another night. It isn’t 
possible that anything has happened to the sun, and this is 
twelve at noon ! ” 

The idea being an alarming one, he scrambled out of bed, 
and groped his way to the window. He was obliged to rub 
the frost off with the sleeve of his dressing-gown before he 
could see anything; and could see very little then. All he 
could make out was, that it was still very foggy and extremely 
cold, and that there was no noise of people running to and fro, 
and making a great stir, as there unquestionably would have 
been if night had beaten off bright day, and taken possession 
of the world. This was a great relief, because ‘‘three days 
after sight of this First of Exchange pay to Mr. Ebenezer 
Scrooge or his order,” and so forth, would have become a 
mere United States’ security if there were no days to count by. 

Scrooge went to bed again, and thought, and thought, and 
thought it over and over and over, and could make nothing of 
it. The more he thought, the more perplexed he was ; and the 
more he endeavoured not to think, the more he thought. Mar- 
ley’s Ghost bothered him exceedingly. Every time he re- 


22 


A CHRISTMAS CAROL 


solved within himself, after mature inquiry, that it was all a 
dream, his mind flew back again, like a strong spring released, 
to its first position, and presented the same problem to be 
worked all through, “Was it a dream or not?’’ 

Scrooge lay in this state until the chimes had gone three 
quarters more, when he remembered, on a sudden, that the 
Ghost had warned him of a visitation when the bell tolled one. 
He resolved to lie awake until the hour passed; and, con- 
sidering that he could no more go to sleep than go to Heaven, 
this was perhaps the wisest resolution in his power. 

The quarter was so long, that he was more than once con- 
vinced he must have sunk into a doze unconsciously, and missed 
the clock. At length it broke upon his listening ear. 

“ Ding, dong ! ” 

“ A quarter past,” said Scrooge, counting. 

“ Ding, dong!” 

“ Half-past ! ” said Scrooge. 

“ Ding, dong I ” 

“ A quarter to it,” said Scrooge. 

“ Ding, dong I ” 

“ The hour itself,” said Scrooge, triumphantly, “ and nothing 
else!” 

He spoke before the hour bell sounded, which it now did 
with a deep, dull, hollow, melancholy One. Light flashed up 
in the room upon the instant, and the curtains of his bed were 
drawn. 

The curtains of his bed were drawn aside, I tell you, by a 
hand. Not the curtains at his feet, nor the curtains at his 
•back, but those to which his face was addressed. The curtains 
of his bed were drawn aside ; and Scrooge, starting up into a 
half-recumbent attitude, found himself face to face with the 
unearthly visitor who drew them: as close to it as I am now 
to you, and I am standing in the spirit at your elbow. 

It was a strange figure — like a child : yet not so like a child 
as like an old man, viewed through some supernatural medium, 
which gave him the appearance of having receded from the 
view, and being diminished to a child’s proportions. Its hair, 
which hung about its neck and down its back, was white as if 
with age; and yet the face had not a wrinkle in it, and the 
tenderest bloom was on the skin. The arms were very long 


A CHRISTMAS CAROL 


23 

and muscular; the hands the same, as if its hold were of un- 
common strength. Its legs and feet, most delicately formed, 
were, like those upper members, bare. It wore a tunic of the 
purest white; and round its waist was bound a lustrous belt, 
the sheen of which was beautiful. It held a branch of fresh 
green holly in its hand; and, in singular contradiction of that 
wintry emblem, had its dress trimmed with summer flowers. 
But the strangest thing about it was, that from the crown of 
its head there sprang a bright clear jet of light, by which all 
this was visible; and which was doubtless the occasion of its 
using, in its duller moments, a great extinguisher for a cap, 
which it now held under its arm. 

Even this, though, when Scrooge looked at it with increas- 
ing steadiness, was not its strangest quality. For as its belt 
sparkled and glittered now in one part and now in another, and 
what was light one instant, at another time was dark, so the 
figure itself fluctuated in its distinctness: being now a thing 
with one arm, now with one leg, now with twenty legs, now 
a pair of legs without a head, now a head without a body : of 
which dissolving parts, no outline would be visible in the dense 
gloom wherein they melted away. And in the very wonder of 
this, it would be itself again ; distinct and clear as ever. 

'' Are you the Spirit, Sir, whose coming was foretold to me ? 
asked Scrooge. 

‘‘lam!’’ 

The voice was soft and gentle. Singularly low, as if in- 
stead of being so close beside him, it were at a distance. 

“ Who, and what are you ? ” Scrooge demanded. 

“ I am the Ghost of Christmas Past.” 

“ Long past ? ” inquired Scrooge ; observant of its dwarfish 
stature. 

“ No. Your past.” 

Perhaps, Scrooge could not have told anybody why, if any- 
body could have asked him ; but he had a special desire to see 
the Spirit in his cap ; and begged him to be covered. 

“ What ! ’* exclaimed the Ghost, “ would you so soon put out, 
with worldly hands, the light I give? Is it not enough that 
you are one of those whose passions made this cap, and force 
me through whole trains of years to wear it low upon my 
brow ! ” 


A CHRISTMAS CAROL 


24 

Scrooge reverently disclaimed all intention to offend, or any 
knowledge of having wilfully “ bonneted ” the Spirit at any 
period of his life. He then made bold to inquire what business 
brought him there. 

“ Your welfare ! ’’ said the Ghost. 

Scrooge expressed himself much obliged, but could not help 
thinking that a night of unbroken rest would have been more 
conducive to that end. The spirit must have heard him think- 
ing, for it said immediately: 

‘‘ Your reclamation, then. Take heed ! ” 

It put out its strong hand as it spoke, and clasped him gently 
by the arm. 

Rise ! and walk with me ! ” 

It would have been in vain for Scrooge to plead that the 
weather and the hour were not adapted to pedestrian purposes ; 
that the bed was warm, and the thermometer a long way below 
freezing ; that he was clad but lightly in his slippers, dressing- 
gown, and nightcap ; and that he had a cold upon him at that 
time. The grasp, though gentle as a woman’s hand, was not 
to be resisted. He rose ; but finding that the Spirit made to- 
wards the window, clasped its robe in supplication. 

''I am a mortal,” Scrooge remonstrated, “ and liable to 
fall.” 

“ Bear but a touch of my hand there” said the Spirit, lay- 
ing it upon his heart, and you shall be upheld in more than 
this!” 

As the words were spoken, they passed through the wall, 
and stood upon an open country road, with fields on either 
hand. The city had entirely vanished. Not a vestige of it 
was to be seen. The darkness and the mist had vanished with 
it, for it was a clear, cold, winter day, with snow upon the 
ground. 

“ Good Heaven ! ” said Scrooge, clasping his hands together, 
as he looked about him. “ I was bred in this place. I was a 
boy here ! ” , 

The Spirit gazed upon him mildly. Its gentle touch, though 
it had been light and instantaneous, appeared still present to the 
old man’s sense of feeling. He was conscious of a thousand 
odours floating in the air, each one connected with a thousand 
thoughts, and hopes, and joys, and cares long, long forgotten! 


A CHRISTMAS CAROL 25 

‘^Your lip is trembling,” said the Ghost. ''And what is 
that upon your cheek ? ” 

Scrooge muttered, with an unusual catching in his voice, 
that it was a pimple ; and begged the Ghost to lead him where 
he would. 

"You recollect the way?” inquired the Spirit. 

" Remember it ! ” cried Scrooge with fervour — " I could 
walk it blindfold.” 

" Strange to have forgotten it for so many years ! ” observed 
the Ghost. " Let us go on.” 

They walked along the road ; Scrooge recognising every gate, 
and post, and tree; until a little market-town appeared in the 
distance, with its bridge, its church, and winding river. Some 
shaggy ponies now were seen trotting towards them with boys 
upon their backs, who called to other boys in country gigs and 
carts, driven by farmers. All these boys were in great spirits, 
and shouted to each other, until the broad fields were so full 
of merry music, that the crisp air laughed to hear it. 

" These are but shadows of the things that have been,” said 
the Ghost. “ They have no consciousness of us.” 

The jocund travellers came on; and as they came, Scrooge 
knew and named them every one. Why was he rejoiced be- 
yond all bounds to see them! Why did his cold eye glisten, 
and his heart leap up as they went past! Why was he filled 
with gladness when he heard them give each other Merry 
Christmas, as they parted at cross-roads and bye-ways, for 
their several homes ! What was Merry Christmas to 
Scrooge? Out upon Merry Christmas! What good had it 
ever done to him? 

" The school is not quite deserted,” said the Ghost. " A 
solitary child, neglected by his friends, is left there still.” 

Scrooge said he knew it. And he sobbed. 

They left the high-road, by a well-remembered lane, and 
soon approached a mansion of dull red brick, with a little 
weathercock-surmounted cupola, on the roof, and a bell hang- 
ing in it. It was a large house, but one of broken fortunes ; 
for the spacious offices were little used, their walls were damp 
and mossy, their windows broken, and their gates decayed. 
Fowls clucked and strutted in the stables ; and the coach-houses 
and sheds were overrun with grass. Nor was it more retentive 


26 


A CHRISTMAS CAROL 


of its ancient state, within; for entering the dreary hall, and 
glancing through the open doors of many rooms, they found 
them poorly furnished, cold, and vast. There was an earthy 
savour in the air, a chilly bareness in the place, which as- 
sociated itself somehow with too much getting up by candle- 
light, and not too much to eat. 

They went, the Ghost and Scrooge, across the hall, to a door 
at the back of the house. It opened before them, and disclosed 
a long, bare, melancholy room, made barer still by lines of 
plain deal forms and desks. At one of these a lonely boy was 
reading near a feeble fire, and Scrooge sat down upon a form, 
and wept to see his poor forgotten self as he had used to be. 

Not a latent echo in the house, not a squeak and scuffle from 
the mice behind the panelling, not a drip from the half-thawed 
waterspout in the dull yard behind, not a sigh among the leafless 
boughs of one despondent poplar, not the idle swinging of an 
empty store-house door, no, not a clicking in the fires, but fell 
upon the heart of Scrooge with softening influence, and gave 
a freer passage to his tears. 

The Spirit touched him on the arm, and pointed to his 
younger self, intent upon his reading. Suddenly a man, in 
foreign garments: wonderfully real and distinct to look at: 
stood outside the window, with an axe stuck in his belt, and 
leading an ass laden with wood by the bridle. 

“ Why, it’s Ali Baba ! ” Scrooge exclaimed in ecstasy. It’s 
dear old honest Ali Baba! Yes, yes, I know! One Christmas 
time, when yonder solitary child was left here all alone, he did 
come, for the first time, just like that. Poor boy ! And Valen- 
tine,” said Scrooge, “ and his wild brother, Orson ; there they 
go ! And what’s his name, who was put down in his drawers, 
asleep, at the Gate of Damascus ; don’t you see him ! And the 
Sultan’s Groom turned upside down by the Genii ; there he is 
upon his head ! Serve him right. I’m glad of it. What busi- 
ness had he to be married to the Princess ! ” 

To hear Scrooge expending all the earnestness of his nature 
on such subjects, in a most extraordinary voice between laugh- 
ing and crying; and to see his heightened and excited face; 
would have been a surprise to his business friends in the City, 
indeed. 

“ There’s the P,arrot ! ” cried Scrooge. Green body and 


A CHRISTMAS CAROL 


27 

3 ^ellow tail, with a thing like a lettuce growing out of the top 
of his head; there he is! Poor Robin Crusoe, he called him, 
when he came home again after sailing round the island. 
‘Poor Robin Crusoe, where have you been, Robin Crusoe?’ 
The man thought he was dreaming, but he wasn’t. It was the 
Parrot, you know. There goes Friday, running for his life 
to the little creek 1 Halloa ! Hoop ! Halloo 1 ” 

Then, with a rapidity of transition very foreign to his usual 
character, he said, in pity for his former self, “ Poor boy ! ” 
and cried again. 

“ I wish,” Scrooge muttered, putting his hand in his pocket, 
and looking about him, after drying his eyes with his cuff: 
“ but it’s too late now.” 

“ What is the matter ? ” asked the Spirit. 

“ Nothing,” said Scrooge. “ Nothing. There was a boy 
singing a Christmas Carol at my door last night. I should 
like to have given him something : that’s all.” 

The Ghost smiled thoughtfully, and waved its hand: say- 
ing as it did so, “ Let us see another Christmas ! ” 

Scrooge’s former self grew larger at the words, and the 
room became a little darker and more dirty. The panels 
shrank, the windows cracked ; fragments of plaster fell out of 
the ceiling, and the naked laths were shown instead ; but how 
all this was brought about, Scrooge knew no more than you do. 
He only knew that it was quite correct; that everything had 
happened so ; that there he was, alone again, when all the other 
boys had gone home for the jolly holidays. 

He was not reading now, but walking up and down de- 
spairingly. Scrooge looked at the Ghost, and with a mournful 
shake of his head, glanced anxiously towards the door. 

It opened ; and a little girl, much younger than the boy, came 
darting in, ^nd putting her arms about his neck, and often 
kissing him, addressed him as her “ Dear, dear brother.” 

“ I have come to bring you home, dear brother ! ” said the 
child, clapping her tiny hands, and bending down to laugh. 

“ To bring you home, home, home ! ” 

“Home, little Fan?” returned the boy. 

“ Yes ! ” said the child, brimful of glee. “ Home, for good 
and all. Home, for ever and ever. Father is so much kinder 
than he used to be, that home’s like Heaven! He spoke so 


28 


A CHRISTMAS CAROL 


gently to me one dear night when I was going to bed, that I 
was not afraid to ask him once more if you might come home ; 
and he said yes, you should ; and sent me in a coach to bring 
you. And you’re ‘to be a man ! ” said the child, opening her 
eyes, and are never to come back here ; but first, we’re to be 
together all the Christmas long, and have the merriest time in 
all the world.” 

“ You are quite a woman, little Fan ! ” exclaimed the boy. 

She clapped her hands and laughed, and tried to touch his 
head; but being too little, laughed again, and stood on tiptoe 
to embrace him. Then she began to drag him, in her childish 
eagerness, towards the door; and he, nothing loth to go, ac- 
companied her. 

A terrible voice in the hall cried, Bring down Master 
Scrooge’s box there ! ” and in the hall appeared the school- 
master himself, who glared on Master Scrooge with a fero- 
cious condescension, and threw him into a dreadful state of 
mind by shaking hands with him. He then conveyed him and 
his sister into the veriest old well of a shivering best-parlour 
that ever was seen, where the maps upon the wall, and the 
celestial and terrestrial globes in the windows, were waxy with 
cold. Here he produced a decanter of curiously light wine, 
and a block of curiously heavy cake, and administered instal- 
ments of those dainties to the young people : at the same time, 
sending out a meagre servant to offer a glass of '' something ” 
to the postboy, who answered that he thanked the gentleman, 
but if it was the same tap as he had tasted before, he had rather 
not. Master Scrooge’s trunk being by this time tied on to the 
top of the chaise, the children bade the schoolmaster good- 
bye right willingly; and getting into it, drove gaily down the 
garden-sweep: the quick wheels dashing the hoar-frost and 
snow from off the dark leaves of the evergreens like spray. 

“ Always a delicate creature, whom a breath might have 
withered,” said the Ghost. “ But she had a large heart ! ” 

“ So she had,” cried Scrooge. You’re right. I’ll not 
gainsay it. Spirit. God forbid ! ” 

“ She died a woman,” said the Ghost, and had, as I think, 
children.” 

“ One child,” Scrooge returned. 

‘‘True,” said the Ghost. “Your nephew!” 


A CHRISTMAS CAROL 


29 

Scrooge seemed uneasy in his mind ; and answered briefly, 

Yes.” 

Although they had but that moment left the school behind 
them, they were now in the busy thoroughfares of a city, where 
shadowy passengers passed and repassed ; where shadowy carts 
and coaches battled for the way, and all the strife and tumult 
of a real city were. It was made plain enough, by the dressing 
of the shops, that here too it was Christmas time again ; but 
it was evening, and the streets were lighted up. 

The Ghost stopped at a certain warehouse door, and asked 
Scrooge if he knew it. 

“ Know it! ” said Scrooge. Was I apprenticed here? ” 

They went in. At sight of an old gentleman in a Welsh 
wig, sitting behind such a high desk, that if he had been two 
inches taller he must have knocked his head against the ceiling, 
Scrooge cried in great excitement : 

Why, it’s old Fezziwig! Bless his heart; it’s Fezziwig 
alive again ! ” 

Old Fezziwig laid down his pen, and looked up at the clock, 
which pointed to the hour of seven. He rubbed his hands ; 
adjusted his capacious waistcoat; laughed all over himself, 
from his shoe to his organ of benevolence; and called out in 
a comfortable, oily, rich, fat, jovial voice: 

‘‘ Yo ho, there ! Ebenezer 1 Dick 1 ” 

Scrooge’s former self, now grown a young man, came briskly 
in, accompanied by his fellow-’prentice. 

“ Dick Wilkins, to be sure ! ” said Scrooge to the Ghost. 

Bless me, yes. There he is. He was very much attached 
to me, was Dick. Poor Dick 1 Dear, dear I ” 

Yo ho, my boys I ” said Fezziwig. ‘‘ No more work to- 
night. Christmas Eve, Dick. Christmas, Ebenezer I Let’s 
have the shutters up,” cried old Fezziwig, with a sharp clap of 
his hands, “before a man can say Jack Robinson!” 

You wouldn’t believe how those two fellows went at it! 
They charged into the street with the shutters — one, two, 
three — had ’em up in their places — four, five, six — ^barred ’em 
and pinned ’em — seven, eight, nine — and came back before you 
could have got to twelve, panting like race horses. 

“ Hilli-ho ! ” cried old Fizziwig, skipping down from the high 
desk, with wonderful agility. “ Clear away, my lads, and let’s 


30 A CHRISTMAS CAROL 

have lots of room here ! Hilli-ho, Dick ! Chirrup, Eben- 
ezer!” 

Clear away ! There was nothing they wouldn’t have cleared 
away, or couldn’t have cleared away, with old Fezziwig look- 
ing on. It was done in a minute. Every movable was packed 
off, as if it were dismissed from public life for ever more ; the 
floor was swept and watered, the lamps were trimmed, fuel 
was heaped upon the fire ; and the warehouse was as snug, and 
warm, and dry, and bright a ball-room, as you would desire to 
see upon a winter’s night. 

In came a fiddler with a music-book, and went up to the 
lofty desk, and made an orchestra of it, and tuned like fifty 
stomach-aches. In came Mrs. Fezziwig, one vast substantial 
smile. In came the three Miss Fezziwigs, beaming and lov- 
able. In came the six young followers whose hearts they 
broke. In came all the young men and women employed in 
the business. In came the housemaid, with her cousin, the 
baker. In came the cook, with her brother’s particular friend, 
the milkman. In came the boy from over the way, who was 
suspected of not having board enough from his master; trying 
to hide himself behind the girl from next door but one, who 
was proved to have had her ears pulled by her mistress. In 
they all came, one after another ; some shyly, some boldly, some 
gracefully, some awkwardly, some pushing, some pulling; in 
they all came, anyhow and everyhow. Away they all went, 
twenty couple at once, hands half round and back again the 
other way; down the middle and up again; round and round 
in various stages of affectionate grouping; old top couple al- 
ways turning up in the wrong place; new top couple starting 
off again as soon as they got there ; all top couples at last, and 
not a bottom one to help them. When this result was brought 
about, old Fezziwig, clapping his hands to stop the dance, cried 
out, Well done! ” and the fiddler plunged his hot face into a 
pot of porter, especially provided for that purpose. But scorn- 
ing rest upon his reappearance, he instantly began again, 
though there were no dancers yet, as if the other fiddler had 
been carried home, exhausted, on a shutter; and he were a 
bran-new man resolved to beat him out of sight, or perish. 

There were more dances, and there were forfeits, and more 
dances, and there was cake, and there was negus, and there 


A CHRISTMAS CAROL 


31 

was a great piece of Cold Roast, and there was a great piece 
of Cold Boiled, and there were mince-pies, and plenty of beer. 
But the great effect of the evening came after the Roast and 
Boiled, when the fiddler (an artful dog, mind! The sort of 
man who knew his business better than you or I could have 
told it him!) struck up “Sir Roger de Coverley.’* Then old 
Fezziwig stood out to dance with Mrs. Fezziwig. Top couple, 
too; with a good stiff piece of work cut out for them; three 
or four and twenty pair of partners ; people who were not to 
be trifled with ; people who would dance, and had no notion of 
walking. 

But if they had been twice as many: ah, four times: old 
Fezziwig would have been a match for them, and so would 
Mrs. Fezziwig. As to her, she was worthy to be his partner in 
every sense of the term. If that’s not high praise, tell me 
higher, and I’ll use it. A positive light appeared to issue from 
Fezziwig’s calves. They shone in every part of the dance like 
moons. You couldn’t have predicted, at any given time, what 
would become of ’em next. And when old Fezziwig and Mrs. 
Fezziwig had gone all through the dance; advance and retire, 
hold hands with your partner; bow and curtsey; corkscrew; 
thread-the-needle, and back again to your place; Fezziwig 
“ cut ” — cut so deftly, that he appeared to wink with his legs, 
and came upon his feet again without a stagger. 

When the clock struck eleven, this domestic ball broke up. 
Mr. and Mrs. Fezziwig took their stations, one on either side 
the door, and shaking hands with every person individually as 
he or she went out, wished him or her a Merry Christmas. 
When everybody had retired but the two ’prentices, they did 
the same to them ; and thus the cheerful voices died away, and 
the lads were left to their beds; which were under a counter 
in the back-shop. 

During the whole of this time, Scrooge had acted like a man 
out of his wits. His heart and soul were in the scene, and with 
his former self. He corroborated everything, remembered 
everything, enjoyed everything, and underwent the strangest 
agitation. It was not until now, when the bright faces of his 
former self and Dick were turned from them, that he re- 
membered the Ghost, and became conscious that it was looking 
full upon him, while the light upon its head burnt very clear. 


A CHRISTMAS CAROL 


32 

A small matter,” said the Ghost, “ to make these silly 
folks so full of gratitude.” 

‘‘ Small ! ” echoed Scrooge. 

The Spirit signed to him to listen to the two apprentices, 
who were pouring out their hearts in praise of Fezziwig: and 
when he had done so, said, 

“ Why ! Is it not ? He has spent but a few pounds of your 
mortal money; three or four, perhaps. Is that so much that 
he deserves this praise?” 

“ It isn’t that,” said Scrooge, heated by the remark, and 
speaking unconsciously like his former, not his latter, self. 
“ It isn’t that, Spirit. He has the power to render us happy 
or unhappy ; to make our service light or burdensome ; a pleas- 
ure or a toil. Say that his power lies in words and looks; 
in things so slight and insignificant that it is impossible to add 
and count ’em up: what then? The happiness he gives, is 
quite as great as if it cost a fortune.” 

He felt the Spirit’s glance, and stopped. 

“ What is the matter ? ” asked the Ghost. 

Nothing particular,” said Scrooge. 

Something, I think ? ” the Ghost insisted. 

“ No,” said Scrooge, No. I should like to be able to say 
a word or two to my clerk just now ! That’s all.” 

His former self turned down the lamps as he gave utterance 
to the wish; and Scrooge and the Ghost again stood side by 
side in the open air. 

“ My time grows short,” observed the Spirit. Quick ! ” 

This was not addressed to Scrooge, or to any one whom he 
could see, but it produced an immediate effect. For again 
Scrooge saw himself. He was older now ; a man in the prime 
of life. His face had not the harsh and rigid lines of later 
years ; but it had begun to wear the signs of care and avarice. 
There was an eager, greedy, restless motion in the eye, which 
showed the passion that had taken root, and where the shadow 
of the growing tree would fall. 

He was not alone, but sat by the side of a fair young girl in 
a mourning-dress: in whose eyes there were tears, which 
sparkled in the light that shone out of the Ghost of Christmas 
Past. 

It matters little,” she said, softly. To you, very little. 


A CHRISTMAS CAROL 


33 

Another idol has displaced me ; and if it can cheer and comfort 
you in time to come, as I would have tried to do, I have no 
just cause to grieve.” 

“ What Idol has displaced you? ” he rejoined. 

A golden one.” 

“ This is the even-handed dealing of the world ! ” he said. 
“ There is nothing on which it is so hard as poverty ; and there 
is nothing it professes to condemn with such severity as the 
pursuit of wealth ! ” 

You fear the world too much,” she answered, gently. 
“ All your other hopes have merged into the hope of being 
beyond the chance of its sordid reproach. I have seen your 
nobler aspirations fall off one by one, until the master-passion, 
Gain, engrosses you. Have I not ? ” 

What then ? ” he retorted. “ Even if I have grown so 
much wiser, what then ? I am not changed towards you.” 

She shook her head. 

“Am I?” 

“ Our contract is an old one. It was made when we were 
both poor and content to be so, until, in good season, we 
could improve our worldly fortune by our patient industry. 
You are changed. When it was made, you were another man.” 

“ I was a boy,” he said impatiently. 

“ Your own feeling tells you that you were not what you 
are,” she returned. “ I am. That which promised happiness 
when we were one in heart, is fraught with misery now that 
we are two. How often and how keenly I have thought of 
this, I will not say. It is enough that I have thought of it, and 
can release you.” 

“ Have I ever sought release ? ” 

“ In words. No. Never.” 

“In what, then?” 

“ In a changed nature ; in an altered spirit ; in another atmos- 
phere of life; another Hope as its great end. In everything 
that made my love of any worth or value in your sight. If this 
had never been between us,” said the girl, looking mildly, but 
with steadiness, upon him ; “ tell me, would you seek me out 
and try to win me now ? Ah, no ! ” 

He seemed to yield to the justice of this supposition, in spite 
of himself. But he said with a struggle, “ You think not.” 


A CHRISTMAS CAROL 


34 

“ I would gladly think otherwise if I could,” she answered, 
“Heaven knows! When / have learned a Truth like this, I 
know how strong and irresistible it must be. But if you were 
free to-day, to-morrow, yesterday, can even I believe that you 
would choose a dowerless girl — ^you who, in your very confi- 
dence with her, weigh everything by Gain: or, choosing her, 
if for a moment you were false enough to your one guiding 
principle to do so, do I not know that your repentance and re- 
gret would surely follow? I do; and I release you. With a 
full heart, for the love of him you once were.” 

He was about to speak; but with her head turned from 
him, she resumed. 

“ You may — ^the memory of what is past half makes me hope 
you will — have pain in this. A, very, very brief time, and you 
will dismiss the recollection of it, gladly, as an unprofitable 
dream, from which it happened well that you awoke. May you 
be happy in the life you have chosen ! ” 

She left him, and they parted. 

“ Spirit I ” said Scrooge, “ show me no more ! Conduct me 
home. Why do you delight to torture me ? ” 

“ One shadow more ! ” exclaimed the Ghost. 

“ No more I ” cried Scrooge. “ No more. I don’t wish to 
see it. Show me no more ! ” 

But the relentless Ghost pinioned him in both his arms, and 
forced him to observe what happened next. 

They were in another scene and place; a room, not very 
large or handsome, but full of comfort. Near to the winter 
fire sat a beautiful young girl, so like the last that Scrooge 
believed it was the same, until he saw her, now a comely 
matron, sitting opposite her daughter. The noise in that room 
was perfectly tumultuous, for there were more children there, 
than Scrooge in his agitated state of mind could count; and, 
unlike the celebrated herd in the poem, they were not forty 
children conducting themselves like one, but every child was 
conducting itself like forty. The consequences were uproar- 
ious beyond belief ; but no one seemed to care ; on the contrary, 
the mother and daughter laughed heartily, and enjoyed it very 
much ; and the latter, soon beginning to mingle in the sports, 
got pillaged by the young brigands most ruthlessly. What 
would I not have given to be one of them ! Though I never 


A CHRISTMAS CAROL 


35 

could have been so rude, no, no! I wouldn’t for the wealth 
of all the world have crushed that braided hair, and torn it 
down ; and for the precious little shoe, I wouldn’t have plucked 
it off, God bless my soul I to save my life. As to measuring 
her waist in sport, as they did, bold young brood, I couldn’t 
have done it; I should have expected my arm to have grown 
round it for a punishment, and never come straight again. 
And yet I should have dearly liked, I own, to have touched her 
lips ; to have questioned her, that she might have opened them ; 
to have looked upon the lashes of her downcast eyes, and never 
raised a blush; to have let loose waves of hair, an inch of 
which would be a keepsake beyond price: in short, I should 
have liked, I do confess, to have had the lightest license of a 
child, and yet been man enough to know its value. 

But now a knocking at the door was heard, and such a rush 
immediately ensued that she with laughing face and plundered 
dress was borne towards it the centre of a flushed and boister- 
ous group, just in time to greet the father, who came home 
attended by a man laden with Christmas toys and presents. 
Then the shouting and the struggling, and the onslaught that 
was made on the defenceless porter! The scaling him with 
chairs for ladders to dive into his pockets, despoil him of 
brown-paper parcels, hold on tight by his cravat, hug him round 
the neck, pommel his back, and kick his legs in irrepressible 
affection! The shouts of wonder and delight with which the 
development of every package was received! The terrible 
announcement that the baby had been taken in the act of put- 
ting a doll’s frying-pan into his mouth, and was more than 
suspected of having swallowed a fictitious turkey, glued on a 
wooden platter! The immense relief of finding this a false 
alarm! The joy, and gratitude, and ecstasy! They are all 
indescribable alike. It is enough that by degrees the chil- 
dren and their emotions got out of the parlour, and by one 
stair at a time, up to the top of the house; where they went 
to bed, and so subsided. 

And now Scrooge looked on more attentively than ever, when 
the master of the house, having his daughter leaning fondly 
on him, sat down with her and her mother at his own fire- 
side; and when he thought that such another creature, quite 
as graceful and as full of promise, might have called him 


A CHRISTMAS CAROL 


36 

father, and been a spring-time in the haggard winter of his 
life, his sight grew very dim indeed. 

“ Belle,” said the husband, turning to his wife with a 
smile, “ I saw an old friend of yours this afternoon.” 

“Who was it?” 

“ Guess ! ” 

“ How can I? Tut, don’t I know?” she added in the same 
breath, laughing as he laughed. “ Mr. Scrooge.” 

“ Mr. Scrooge it was. I passed his office window ; and as it 
was not shut up, and he had a candle inside, I could scarcely 
help seeing him. His partner lies upon the point of death, 
I hear ; and there he sat alone. Quite alone in the world, I do 
believe.” 

“ Spirit ! ” said Scrooge in a broken voice, “ remove me from 
this place.” 

“ I told you these were shadows of the things that have 
been,” said the Ghost. “ That they are what they are, do not 
blame me ! ” 

“ Remove me ! ” Scrooge exclaimed, “ I cannot bear it ! ” 

He turned upon the Ghost, and seeing that it looked upon 
him with a face, in which in some strange way there were 
fragments of all the faces it had shown him, wrestled with it. 

“ Leave me ! Take me back. Haunt me no longer ! ” 

In the struggle, if that can be called a struggle in which 
the Ghost with no visible resistance on its own part was un- 
disturbed by any effort of its adversary, Scrooge observed 
that its light was burning high and bright; and dimly con- 
necting that with its influence over him, he seized the ex- 
tinguisher-cap, and by a sudden action pressed it down upon 
its head. 

The Spirit dropped beneath it, so that the extinguisher 
covered its whole form; but though Scrooge pressed it down 
with all his force, he could not hide the light, which streamed 
from under it, in an unbroken flood upon the ground. 

He was conscious of being exhausted, and overcome by an 
irresistible drowsiness; and further, of being in his own bed- 
room. He gave the cap a parting squeeze, in which his hand 
relaxed; and had barely time to reel to bed, before he sank 
into a heavy sleep. 


A CHRISTMAS CAROL 


37 


STAVE THREE 

THE SECOND OF THE THREE SPIRITS 

A waking in the middle of a prodigiously tough snore, 
and sitting up in bed to get his thoughts together, 
Scrooge had no occasion to be told that the bell was again 
upon the stroke of one. He felt that he was restored to con- 
sciousness in the right nick of time, for the especial purpose 
of holding a conference with the second messenger despatched 
to him through Jacob Marley’s intervention. But, finding that 
he turned uncomfortably cold when he began to wonder 
which of his curtains this new spectre would draw back, he 
put them every one aside with his own hands, and lying down 
again, established a sharp lookout all round the bed. For 
he wished to challenge the Spirit on the moment of its ap- 
pearance, and did not wish to be taken by surprise and made 
nervous. 

Gentlemen of the free-and-easy sort, who plume themselves 
on being acquainted with a move or two, and being usually 
equal to the time-of-day, express the wide range of their ca- 
pacity for adventure by observing that they are good for 
anything from pitch-and-toss to manslaughter; between 
which opposite extremes, no doubt, there lies a tolerably wide 
and comprehensive range of subjects. Without venturing for 
Scrooge quite as hardily as this, I don't mind calling on you 
to believe that he was ready for a good broad field of strange 
appearances, and that nothing between a baby and rhinoceros 
would have astonished him very much. 

Now, being prepared for almost anything, he was not by 
any means prepared for nothing; and, consequently, when the 
bell struck one, and no shape appeared, he was taken with a 
violent fit of trembling. Five minutes, ten minutes, a quarter 
of an hour went by, yet nothing came. All this time, he lay 
upon his bed, the very core and centre of a blaze of ruddy 
light, which streamed upon it when the clock proclaimed the 
hour; and which, being only light, was more alarming than a 
dozen ghosts, as he was powerless to make out what it meant, 
or would be at; and was sometimes apprehensive that he 


A CHRISTMAS CAROL 


38 

might be at that very moment an interesting case of spon- 
taneous combustion, without having the consolation of knowing 
it. At last, however, he began to think — as you or I would 
have thought at first; for it is always the person not in the 
predicament who knows what ought to have been done in it, 
and would unquestionably have done it too — at last, I say, he 
began to think that the source and secret of this ghostly light 
might be in the adjoining room, from whence, on further 
tracing it, it seemed to shine. This idea taking full pos- 
session of his mind, he got up softly and shuffied in his slip- 
pers to the door. 

The moment Scrooge’s hand was on the lock, a strange 
voice called him by his name, and bade him enter. He 
obeyed. 

It was his own room. There was no doubt about that. 
But it had undergone a surprising transformation. The walls 
and ceiling were so hung with living green, that it looked 
a perfect grove, from every part of which, bright gleaming 
berries glistened. The crisp leaves of holly, mistletoe, and 
ivy reflected back the light, as if so many little mirrors had 
been scattered there; and such a mighty blaze went roaring 
up the chimney, as that dull petrifaction of a hearth had 
never known in Scrooge’s time, or Marley’s, or for many and 
many a winter season gone. Heaped up on the floor, to form 
a kind of throne, were turkeys, geese, game, poultry, brawn, 
great joints of meat, sucking-pigs, long wreaths of sausages, 
mince-pies, plum-puddings, barrels of oysters, red-hot chest- 
nuts, cherry-cheeked apples, juicy oranges, luscious pears, im- 
mense twelfth-cakes, and seething bowls of punch, that made 
the chamber dim with their delicious steam. In easy state 
upon this couch, there sat a jolly Giant, glorious to see; who 
bore a glowing torch, in shape not unlike Plenty’s horn, and 
held it up, high up, to shed its light on Scrooge, as he came 
peeping round the door. 

‘‘ Come in ! ” exclaimed the Ghost. Come in ! and know 
me better, man ! ” 

Scrooge entered timidly, and hung his head before this 
Spirit. He was not the dogged Scrooge he had been; and 
though the Spirit’s eyes were clear and kind, he did not like 
to meet them. 


A CHRISTMAS CAROL 


39 

‘‘ I am the Ghost of Christmas Present/’ said the Spirit. 
** Look upon me ! ” 

Scrooge reverently did so. It was clothed in one simple 
deep green robe, or mantle, bordered with white fur. This 
garment hung so loosely on the figure, that its capacious 
breast was bare, as if disdaining to be warded or concealed 
by any artifice. Its feet, observable beneath the ample folds 
of the garment, were also bare; and on its head it wore no 
other covering than a holly wreath set here and there with 
shining icicles. Its dark brown curls were long and free; 
free as its genial face, its sparkling eye, its open hand, its 
cheery voice, its unconstrained demeanour, and its joyful air. 
Girded round its middle was an antique scabbard; but no 
sword was in it, and the ancient sheath was eaten up with 
rust. 

‘‘ You have never seen the like of me before ! ” exclaimed the 
Spirit. 

“ Never,” Scrooge made answer to it. 

“ Have never walked forth with the younger members of 
my family; meaning (for I am very young) my elder brothers 
born in these later years ? ” pursued the Phantom. 

“ I don’t think I have,” said Scrooge. ‘‘ I am afraid I have 
not. Have you had many brothers. Spirit ? ” 

“ More than eighteen hundred,” said the Ghost. 

“ A tremendous family to provide for ! ” muttered Scrooge. 

The Ghost of Christmas Present rose. 

Spirit,” said Scrooge submissively, “ conduct me where 
you will. I went forth last night on compulsion, and I learnt 
a lesson which is working now. To-night, if you have aught 
to teach me, let me profit by it.” 

'' Touch my robe ! ” 

Scrooge did as he was told, and held it fast. 

Holly, mistletoe, red berries, ivy, turkeys, geese, game, 
poultry, brawn, meat, pigs, sausages, oysters, pies, pud- 
dings, fruit, and punch, all vanished instantly. So did the 
room, the fire, the ruddy glow, the hour of night, and they 
stood in the City streets on Christmas morning, where (for 
the weather was severe) the people made a rough, but brisk 
and not unpleasant kind of music, in scraping the snow from 
the pavement in front of their dwellings, and from the tops 


A CHRISTMAS CAROL 


40 

of their houses, whence it was mad delight to the boys to see 
it come plumping down into the road below, and splitting into 
artificial little snow-storms. 

The house fronts looked black enough, and the windows 
blacker, contrasting with the smooth white sheet of snow 
upon the roofs, and with the dirtier snow upon the ground; 
which last deposit had been ploughed up in deep furrows by 
the heavy wheels of carts and waggons ; furrows that crossed 
and re-crossed each other hundreds of times where the great 
streets branched off, and made intricate channels, hard to 
trace, in the thick yellov/ mud and icy water. The sky was 
gloomy, and the shortest streets were choked up with a dingy 
mist, half thawed, half frozen, whose heavier particles de- 
scended in a shower of sooty atoms, as if all the chimneys 
in Great Britain had, by one consent, caught fire, and were 
blazing away to their dear hearts’ content. There was noth- 
ing very cheerful in the climate or the town, and yet was 
there an air of cheerfulness abroad that the clearest summer 
air and brightest summer sun might have endeavoured to dif- 
fuse in vain. 

For, the people who were shovelling away on the housetops 
were jovial and full of glee; calling out to one another from 
the parapets, and now and then exchanging a facetious snow- 
ball — better-natured missile far than many a wordy jest — 
laughing heartily if it went right and not less heartily if it 
went wrong. The poulterers’ shops were still half open, and 
the fruiterers’ were radiant in their glory. There were great, 
round, hot-bellied baskets of chestnuts, shaped like the waist- 
coats of jolly old gentlemen, lolling at the doors, and tumbling 
out into the street in their apoplectic opulence. There were 
ruddy, brown-faced broad-girthed Spanish Onions, shining in 
the fatness of their growth like Spanish Friars; and winking 
from their shelves in wanton slyness at the girls as they went 
by, and glanced demurely at the hung-up mistletoe. There 
were pears and apples, clustered high in blooming pyramids; 
there were bunches of grapes, made, in the shop-keepers’ be- 
nevolence, to dangle from conspicuous hooks, that people’s 
mouths might water gratis as they passed ; there were piles of 
filberts, mossy and brown, recalling, in their fragrance, an- 
cient walks among the woods, and pleasant shufflings ankle 


A CHRISTMAS CAROL 


41 

deep through withered leaves; there were Norfolk Biffins, 
squab, and swarthy, setting off the yellow of the oranges and 
lemons, and, in the great compactness of their juicy persons, 
urgently entreating and beseeching to be carried home in 
paper bags and eaten after dinner. The very gold and silver 
fish, set forth among these choice fruits in a bowl, though 
members of a dull and stagnant-blooded race, appeared to 
know that there was something going on ; and, to a fish, went 
gasping round and round their little world in slow and pas- 
sionless excitement. 

The Grocers’! oh, the Grocers’! nearly closed, with perhaps 
two shutters down, or one; but through those gaps such 
glimpses ! It was not alone that the scales descending on the 
counter made a merry sound, or that the twine and roller 
parted company so briskly, or that the canisters were rattled 
up and down like juggling tricks, or even that the blended 
scents of tea and coffee were so grateful to the nose, or even 
that the raisins were so plentiful and rare, the almonds so ex- 
tremely white, the sticks of cinnamon so long and straight, the 
other spices so delicious, the candied fruits so caked and spotted 
with molten sugar as to make the coldest lookers-on faint and 
subsequently bilious. Nor was it that the figs were moist and 
pulpy, or that the French plums blushed in modest tartness 
from their highly decorated boxes, or that everything was 
good to eat and in its Christmas dress : but the customers were 
all so hurried and so eager in the hopeful promise of the 
day, that they tumbled up against each other at the door, 
clashing their wicker baskets wildly, and left their purchases 
upon the counter, and came running back to fetch them, and 
committed hundreds of the like mistakes in the best humour 
possible; while the Grocer and his people were so frank and 
fresh that the polished hearts with which they fastened their 
aprons behind might have been their own, worn outside for 
general inspection, and for Christmas daws to peck at if they 
chose. 

But soon the steeples called good people all, to church and 
chapel, and away they came, flocking through the streets in 
their best clothes, and with their gayest faces. And at the 
same time there emerged from scores of bye-streets, lanes, 
and nameless turnings, innumerable people, carrying their din- 


A CHRISTMAS CAROL 


42 

ners to the bakers’ shops. The sight of these poor revellers 
appeared to interest the Spirit very much, for he stood with 
Scrooge beside him in a baker’s doorway, and taking off the 
covers as their bearers passed, sprinkled incense on their din- 
ners from his torch. And it was a very uncommon kind of 
torch, for once or twice when there were angry words between 
some dinner-carriers who had jostled with each other, he shed 
a few drops of water on them from it, and their good humour 
was restored directly. For they said, it was a shame to quarrel 
upon Christmas Day. And so it was! God love it, so it 
was ! 

In time the bells ceased, and the bakers were shut up ; and 
yet there was a genial shadowing forth of all these dinners 
and the progress of their cooking, in the thawed blotch of wet 
above jeach baker’s oven; where the pavement smoked as if its 
stones were cooking too. 

‘‘ Is there a peculiar flavour in what you sprinkle from your 
torch ? ” asked Scrooge. 

There is. My own.” 

‘‘ Would it apply to any kind of dinner on this day? ” asked 
Scrooge. 

“ To any kindly given. To a poor one most.” 

Why to a poor one most ? ” asked Scrooge. 

‘‘ Because it needs it most.” 

Spirit,” said Scrooge, after a moment’s thought, “ I won- 
der you, of all the beings in the many worlds about us, should 
desire to cramp these people’s opportunities of innocent en- 
joyment.” 

“ I ! ” cried the Spirit. 

‘‘ You would deprive them of their means of dining every 
seventh day, often the only day on which they can be said to 
dine at all,” said Scrooge. “ Wouldn’t you ? ” 

I! ” cried the Spirit. 

“ You seek to close these places on the Seventh Day ? ” said 
Scrooge. And it comes to the same thing.” 

/ seek ! ” exclaimed the Spirit. 

“ Forgive me if I am wrong. It has been done in your 
name, or at least in that of your family,” said Scrooge. 

‘‘ There are some upon this earth of yours,” returned the 


A CHRISTMAS CAROL 


43 

Spirit, who lay claim to know us, and who do their deeds of 
passion, pride, ill-will, hatred, envy, bigotry, and selfishness 
in our name, who are as strange to us and all our kith and 
kin, as if they had never lived. Remember that, and charge 
their doings on themselves, not us.” 

Scrooge promised that he would; and they went on, in- 
visible, as they had been before, into the suburbs of the town. 
It was a remarkable quality of the Ghost (which Scrooge had 
observed at the baker’s), that notwithstanding his gigantic size, 
he could accommodate himself to any place with ease; and 
that he stood beneath a low roof quite as gracefully and like 
a supernatural creature, as it was possible he could have done 
in any lofty hall. 

And perhaps it was the pleasure the good Spirit had in 
showing off this power of his, or else it was his own kind, 
generous, hearty nature, and his sympathy with all poor men, 
that led him straight to Scrooge’s clerk’s ; for there he went, 
and took Scrooge with him, holding to his robe; and on the 
threshold of the door the Spirit smiled, and stopped to bless 
Bob Cratchit’s dwelling with the sprinkling of his torch. 
Think of that! Bob had but fifteen “Bob” a- week himself; 
he pocketed on Saturdays but fifteen copies of his Christian 
name; and yet the Ghost of Christmas Present blessed his 
four-roomed house! 

Then up rose Mrs. Cratchit, Cratchit’s wife, dressed out 
but poorly in a twice-turned gown, but brave in ribbons, which 
are cheap and make a goodly show for sixpence ; and she laid 
the cloth, assisted by Belinda Cratchit, second of her daugh- 
ters, also brave in ribbons; while a Master Peter Cratchit 
plunged a fork into the saucepan of potatoes, and getting the 
corners of his monstrous shirt collar (Bob’s private property, 
conferred upon his son and heir in honour of the day) into 
his mouth, rejoiced to find himself so gallantly attired, and 
yearned to show his linen in the fashionable Parks. And now 
two smaller Cratchits, boy and girl, came tearing in, screaming 
that outside the baker’s they had smelt the goose, and known it 
for their own; and basking in luxurious thoughts of sage- 
and-onion, these young Cratchits danced about the table, and 
exalted Master Peter Cratchit to the skies, while he (not 


A CHRISTMAS CAROL 


44 

proud, although his collars nearly choked him) blew the fire, 
until the slow potatoes bubbling up, knocked loudly at the 
saucepan-lid to be let out and peeled. 

“ What has ever got your precious father then ? ” said Mrs. 
Cratchit. ‘‘And your brother. Tiny Tim! And Martha 
warn’t as late last Christmas Day by half-an-hour I ” 

“ Here’s Martha, mother ! ” said a girl, appearing as she 
spoke. 

“ Here’s Martha, mother ! ” cried the two young Cratchits. 
“ Hurrah I There’s such a goose, Martha I ” 

“ Why, bless your heart alive, my dear, how late you are ! ” 
said Mrs. Cratchit, kissing her a dozen times, and taking off 
her shawl and bonnet for her with officious zeal. 

“ We’d a deal of work to finish up last night,” replied the 
girl, “ and had to clear away this morning, mother ! ” 

“Well! Never mind so long as you are come,” said Mrs. 
Cratchit. “ Sit ye down before the fire, my dear, and have 
a warm. Lord bless ye ! ” 

“ No, no ! There’s father coming,” cried the two young 
Cratchits, who were everywhere at once. “ Hide, Martha, 
hide!” 

So Martha hid herself, and in came little Bob, the father, 
with at least three feet of comforter exclusive of the fringe, 
hanging down before him; and his threadbare clothes darned 
up and brushed, to look seasonable; and Tiny Tim upon his 
shoulder. Alas for Tiny Tim, he bore a little crutch, and had 
his limbs supported by an iron frame! 

“Why, where’s our Martha?” cried Bob Cratchit, looking 
round. 

“ Not coming,” said Mrs. Cratchit. 

“Not coming!” said Bob, with a sudden declension in his 
high spirits; for he had been Tim’s blood horse all the way 
from church, and had come home rampant. “ Not coming 
upon Christmas Day ! ” 

Martha didn’t like to see him disappointed, if it were only 
in joke; so she came out prematurely from behind the closet 
door, and ran into his arms, while the two young Cratchits 
hustled Tiny Tim, and bore him off into the wash-house, that 
he might hear the pudding singing in the copper. 

“And how did little Tim behave?’' asked Mrs. Cratchit, 


A CHRISTMAS CAROL 45 

when she had rallied Bob on his credulity, and Bob had 
hugged his daughter to his heart’s content. 

“ As good as gold,” said Bob, “ and better. Somehow he 
gets thoughtful, sitting by himself so much, and thinks the 
strangest things you ever heard. He told me, coming home, 
that he hoped the people saw him in the church, because he 
was a cripple, and it might be pleasant to them to remember 
upon Christmas Day, who made lame beggars walk and blind 
men see.” 

Bob’s voice was tremulous when he told them this,, and 
trembled more when he said that Tiny Tim was growing 
strong and hearty. 

His active little crutch was heard upon the floor, and back 
came Tiny Tim before another word was spoken, escorted 
by his brother and sister to his stool before the fire; and 
while Bob, turning up his cuf¥s — as if, poor fellow, they were 
capable of being made more shabby — compounded some hot 
mixture in a jug with gin and lemons, and stirred it round 
and round and put it on the hob to simmer; Master Peter, 
and the two ubiquitous young Cratchits went to fetch the goose, 
with which they soon returned in high procession. 

Such a bustle ensued that you might have thought a goose 
the rarest of all birds; a feathered phenomenon, to which a 
black swan was a matter of course — and in truth it was some- 
thing very like it in that house. Mrs. Cratchit made the 
gravy (ready beforehand in a little saucepan) hissing hot; 
Master Peter mashed the potatoes with incredible vigour ; Miss 
Belinda sweetened up the apple sauce; Martha dusted the hot 
plates; Bob took Tiny Tim beside him in a tiny corner at the 
table; the two young Cratchits set chairs for everybody, not 
forgetting themselves, and mounting guard upon their posts, 
crammed spoons into their mouths, lest they should shriek for 
goose before their turn came to be helped. At last the dishes 
were set on, and grace was said. It was succeeded by a breath- 
less pause, as Mrs. Cratchit, looking slowly all along the carv- 
ing-knife, prepared to plunge it in the breast; but when she 
did, and when the long expected gush of stuffing issued forth, 
one murmur of delight arose all round the board, and even 
Tiny Tim, excited by the two young Cratchits, beat on the 
table with the handle of his knife, and feebly cried Hurrah! 


A CHRISTMAS CAROL 


46 

There never was such a goose. Bob said he didn’t believe 
there ever was such a goose cooked. Its tenderness and 
flavour, size and cheapness, were the themes of universal admi- 
ration. Eked out by the apple sauce and mashed potatoes, it 
was a sufficient dinner for the whole family; indeed, as Mrs. 
Cratchit said with great delight (surveying one small atom of 
a bone upon the dish) they hadn’t ate it all at last! Yet every 
one had had enough, and the youngest Cratchits in particular, 
were steeped in sage and onion to the eyebrows 1 But now, the 
plates being changed by Miss Belinda, Mrs. Cratchit left the 
room alone — ^too nervous to bear witnesses — to take the pud- 
ding up and bring it in. 

Suppose it should not be done enough! Suppose it should 
break in turning out! Suppose somebody should have got 
over the wall of the back-yard, and stolen it, while they 
were m^erry with the goose — a supposition at which the two 
young Cratchits became livid ! All sorts of horrors were sup- 
posed. 

Hallo! A great deal of steam! The pudding was out of 
the copper. A smell like a washing-day! That was the 
cloth. A smell like an eating-house and a pastrycook’s next 
door to each other, with a laundress’s next door to that ! That 
was the pudding! In half a minute Mrs. Cratchit entered — 
flushed, but smiling proudly — with the pudding like a speckled 
cannon-ball so hard and firm blazing in half of half-a-quartern 
of ignited brandy, and bedight with Christmas holly stuck into 
the top. 

Oh, a wonderful pudding! Bob Cratchit said, and calmly 
too, that he regarded it as the greatest success achieved by 
Mrs. Cratchit since their marriage. Mrs. Cratchit said that 
now the weight was off her mind, she would confess she had 
had her doubts about the quantity of flour. Everybody had 
something to say about it, but nobody said or thought it was 
at all a small pudding for a large family. It would have been 
flat heresy to do so. Any Cratchit would have blushed to hint 
at such a thing. 

At last the dinner was all done, the cloth was cleared, the 
hearth swept, and the fire made up. The compound in the 
jug being tasted, and considered perfect,, apples and oranges 
were put upon the table, and a shovelful of chestnuts on the 


A CHRISTMAS CAROL 


47 

fire. Then all the Cratchit family drew round the hearth, in 
what Bob Cratchit called a circle, meaning half a one ; and at 
Bob Cratchit’s elbow stood the family display of glass. Two 
tumblers, and a custard-cup without a handle. 

These held the hot stuff from the jug, however, as well as 
golden goblets would have done; and Bob served it out with 
beaming looks, while the chestnuts on the fire sputtered and 
cracked noisily. Then Bob proposed: 

A Merry Christmas to us all, my dears. God bless us ! ” 

Which all the family re-echoed. 

God bless us every one ! ” said Tiny Tim, the last of all. 

He sat very close to his father’s side upon his little stool. 
Bob held his withered little hand in his, as if he loved the 
child, and wished to keep him by his side, and dreaded that 
he might be taken from him. 

Spirit ! ” said Scrooge, with an interest he had never felt 
before, “ tell me that Tiny Tim will live.” 

I see a vacant seat,” replied the Ghost, in the poor chim- 
ney-corner, and a crutch without an owner, carefully pre- 
served. If these shadows remain unaltered by the Future, the 
child will die.” 

No, no,” said Scrooge. ‘‘ Oh, no, kind Spirit ! say he will 
be spared.” 

“If these shadows remain unaltered by the Future, none 
other of my race,” returned the Ghost, “ will find him here. 
What then? If he be like to die, he had better do it, and 
decrease the surplus population.” 

Scrooge hung his head to hear his own words quoted by 
the Spirit, and was overcome with penitence and grief. 

“ Man,” said the Ghost, “ if man you be in heart, not ada- 
mant, forbear that wicked cant until you have discovered 
What the surplus is, and Where it is. Will you decide what 
men shall live, what men shall die? It may be, that in the 
sight of Heaven, you are more worthless and less fit to live 
than millions like this poor man’s child. O God ! to hear the 
Insect on the leaf pronouncing on the too much life among his 
hungry brothers in the dust ! ” 

Scrooge bent before the Ghost’s rebuke, and trembling cast 
his eyes upon the ground. But he raised them speedily, on 
hearing his own name. 


48 


A CHRISTMAS CAROL 


“Mr. Scrooge!” said Bob; “I’ll give you Mr. Scrooge, 
the Founder of the Feast! ” 

“ The Founder of the Feast indeed ! ” cried Mrs. Cratchit, 
reddening. “ I wish I had him here. I’d give him a piece 
of my mind to feast upon, and I hope he’d have a good ap- 
petite for it.” 

“ My dear,” said Bob, “ the children ! Christmas Day.” 

“ It should be Christmas Day, I am sure,” said she, 
on which one drinks the health of such an odious, stingy, 
hard, unfeeling man as Mr. Scrooge. You know he is, Rob- 
ert ! Nobody knows it better than you do, poor fel- 
low!” 

“ My dear,” was Bob’s mild answer, “ Christmas Day.” 

“ I’ll drink his health for your sake and the Day’s,” said 
Mrs. Cratchit, “not for his. Long life to him! A Merry 
Christmas and a Happy New Year! He’ll be very merry and 
very happy, I have no doubt ! ” 

The children drank the toast after her. It was the first 
of their proceedings which had no heartiness in it. Tiny Tim 
drank it last of all, but he didn’t care twopence for it. Scrooge 
was the Ogre of the family. The mention of his name cast 
a dark shadow on the party, which was not dispelled for full 
five minutes. 

After it had passed away, they were ten times merrier 
than before, from the mere relief of Scrooge the Baleful being 
done with. Bob Cratchit told them how he had a situation in 
his eye for Master Peter, which would bring in, if obtained, 
full five-and-sixpence weekly. The two young Cratchits 
laughed tremendously at the idea of Peter’s being a man of 
business; and Peter himself looked thoughtfully at the fire 
from between his collars, as if he were deliberating what par- 
ticular investments he should favour when he came into the 
receipt of that bewildering income. Martha, who was a poor 
apprentice at a milliner’s, then told them what kind of work 
she had to do, and how many hours she worked at a stretch, 
and how she meant to lie abed to-morrow morning for a good 
long rest; to-morrow being a holiday she passed at home. 
Also how she had seen a countess and a lord some days before, 
and how the lord “ was much about as tall as Peter ” ; at which 
Peter pulled up his collars so high that you couldn’t have seen 


% 



«“GOD BLESS US EVERY ONE!’ SAID TINY TIM ”— 47 



©CI.K 64247 


A CHRISTMAS CAROL 


49 

his head if you had been there. All this time the chestnuts 
and the jug went round and round; and by and by they 
had a song, about a lost child travelling in the snow, from 
Tiny Tim, who had a plaintive little voice, and sang it very 
well indeed. 

There was nothing of high mark in this. They were not 
a handsome family ; they were not well dressed ; their shoes 
were far from being water-proof; their clothes were scanty; 
and Peter might have known, and very likely did, the inside 
of a pawnbroker’s. But, they were happy, grateful, pleased 
with one another, and contented with the time ; and when they 
faded, and looked happier yet in the bright sprinklings of the 
Spirit’s torch at parting, Scrooge had his eye upon them, and 
especially on Tiny Tim, until the last. 

By this time it was getting dark, and snowing pretty heavily ; 
and as Scrooge and the Spirit went along the streets, the 
brightness of the roaring fires in kitchens, parlours, and 
all sorts of rooms, was wonderful. Here, the flickering of 
the blaze showed preparations for a cosy dinner, with hot 
plates baking through and through before the fire, and deep 
red curtains, ready to be drawn to shut out cold and darkness. 
There, all the children of the house were running out into the 
snow to meet their married sisters, brothers, cousins, uncles, 
aunts, and be the first to greet them. Here, again, were shad- 
ows on the window-blind of guests assembling; and there a 
group of handsome girls, all hooded and fur-booted, and all 
chattering at once, tripped lightly off to some near neighbour’s 
house ; where, woe upon the single man who saw them enter — 
artful witches ; well they knew it — in a glow ! 

But if you had judged from the numbers of people on their 
way to friendly gatherings, you might have thought that no 
one was at home to give them welcome when they got there, 
instead of every house expecting company, and piling up its 
fires half-chimney high. Blessings on it, how the Ghost ex- 
ulted ! How it bared its breadth of breast, and opened its 
capacious palm, and floated on, outpouring, with a generous 
hand, its bright and harmless mirth on everything within its 
reach ! The very lamplighter, who ran on before dotting the 
dusky street with specks of light, and who was dressed to 
spend the evening somewhere, laughed out loudly as the Spirit 


A CHRISTMAS CAROL 


50 

passed: though little kenned the lamplighter that he had any 
company but Christmas! 

And now, without a word of warning from the Ghost, they 
stood upon a bleak and desert moor, where monstrous masses 
of rude stone were cast about, as though it were the burial- 
place of giants; and water spread itself wheresoever it listed, 
or would have done so, but for the frost that held it prisoner ; 
and nothing grew but moss and furze, and coarse, rank grass. 
Down in the west the setting sun had left a streak of fiery red, 
which glared upon the desolation for an instant, like a sullen 
eye, and frowning lower, lower, lower yet, was lost in the 
thick gloom of darkest night. 

“ What place is this ? ” asked Scrooge. 

‘‘A place where Miners live, who labour in the bowels of 
the earth,’^ returned the Spirit. “ But they know me. See I ” 

A light shone from the window of a hut, and swiftly they 
advanced towards it. Passing through the wall of mud and 
stone, they found a cheerful company assembled round a 
glowing fire. An old, old man and woman, with their chil- 
dren and their children’s children, and another generation 
beyond that, all decked out gaily in their holiday attire. The 
old man, in a voice that seldom rose above the howling of the 
wind upon the barren waste, was singing them a Christmas 
song; it had been a very old song when he was a boy; and 
from time to time they all joined in the chorus. So surely 
as they raised their voices, the old man got quite blithe and 
loud ; and so surely as they stopped, his vigour sank again. 

The Spirit did not tarry here, but bade Scrooge hold his 
robe, and passing on above the moor, sped whither? Not 
to sea? To sea. To Scrooge’s horror, looking back, he 
saw the last of the land, a frightful range of rocks, behind 
them ; and his ears were deafened by the thundering of water, 
as it rolled, and roared, and raged among the dreadful caverns 
it had worn, and fiercely tried to undermine the earth. 

Built upon a dismal reef of sunken rocks, some league or so 
from shore, on which the waters chafed and dashed, the wild 
year through, there stood a solitary lighthouse. Great heaps 
of seaweed clung to its base, and storm-birds — ^born of the 
wind one might suppose, as sea-weed of the water — rose and 
fell about it, like the waves they skimmed. 


A CHRISTMAS CAROL 


51 

But even here, two men who watched the light had made 
a fire, that through the loophole in the thick stone wall shed 
out a ray of brightness on the awful sea. Joining their horny 
hands over the rough table at which they sat, they wished each 
other Merry Christmas in their can of grog; and one of them, 
the elder, too, with his face all damaged and scarred with 
hard weather, as the figurehead of an old ship might be: 
struck up a sturdy song that was like a Gale in itself. 

Again the Ghost sped on, above the black and heaving sea — 
on, on — until, being far away, as he told Scrooge, from any 
shore, they lighted on a ship. They stood beside the helmsman 
at the wheel, the lookout in the bow, the officers who had the 
watch ; dark, ghostly figures in their several stations ; but every 
man among them hummed a Christmas tune, or had a Christ- 
mas thought, or spoke below his breath to his companion of 
some bygone Christmas Day, with homeward hopes belonging 
to it. And every man on board, waking or sleeping, good 
or bad, had had a kinder word for another on that day than 
on any day in the year; and had shared to some extent in 
its festivities, and had remembered those he cared for at a 
distance, and had known that they delighted to remember 
him. 

It was a great surprise to Scrooge, while listening to the 
moaning of the wind, and thinking what a solemn thing it 
was to move on through the lonely darkness over an unknown 
abyss, whose depths were secrets as profound as Death : it was 
a great surprise to Scrooge, while thus engaged, to hear a 
hearty laugh. It was a much greater surprise to Scrooge to 
recognise it as his own nephew’s, and to find himself in a 
bright, dry, gleaming room, with the Spirit standing smiling 
by his side, and looking at that same nephew with approving 
affability. 

“ Ha, ha 1 ” laughed Scrooge’s nephew. Ha, ha, ha ! ” 

If you should happen, by any unlikely chance, to know a man 
more blest in a laugh than Scrooge’s nephew, all I can say is, 
I should like to know him too. Introduce him to me, and I’ll 
cultivate his acquaintance. 

It is a fair, even-handed, noble adjustment of things, that 
while there is infection in disease and sorrow, there is nothing 
in the world so irresistibly contagious as laughter and good- 


A CHRISTMAS CAROL 


52 

humour. When Scrooge’s nephew laughed in this way : hold- 
ing his sides, rolling his head, and twisting his face into the 
most extravagant contortions: Scrooge’s niece, by marriage, 
laughed as heartily as he. And their assembled friends being 
not a bit behindhand, roared out, lustily. 

“ Ha, ha ! Ha, ha, ha, ha ! ” 

He said that Christmas was a humbug, as I live ! ” cried 
Scrooge’s nephew. “ He believed it too ! ” 

“More shame for him, Fred!” said Scrooge’s niece, in- 
dignantly. Bless those women; they never do anything by 
halves. They are always in earnest. 

She was very pretty: exceedingly pretty. With a dimpled, 
surprised-looking, capital face ; a ripe little mouth, that seemed 
made to be kissed — as no doubt it was ; all kinds of good little 
dots about her chin, that melted into one another when she 
laughed; and the sunniest pair of eyes you ever saw in any 
little creature’s head. Altogether she was what you would 
have called provoking, you know; but satisfactory, too. Oh, 
perfectly satisfactory ! 

“ He’s a comical old fellow,” said Scrooge’s nephew, “ that’s 
the truth ; and not so pleasant as he might be. However, his 
offences carry their own punishment, and I have nothing to 
say against him.” 

“ I’m sure he is very rich, Fred,” hinted Scrooge’s niece. 
“ At least you always tell me so.” 

“ What of that, my dear ! ” said Scrooge’s nephew. “ His 
wealth is of no use to him. He don’t do any good with it. 
He don’t make himself comfortable with it. He hasn’t the 
satisfaction of thinking — ha, ha, ha! — that he is ever going 
to benefit Us with it.” 

“ I have no patience with him,” observed Scrooge’s niece. 
Scrooge’s niece’s sisters, and all the other ladies, expressed the 
same opinion. 

“ Oh, I have ! ” said Scrooge’s nephew. “ I am sorry for 
him ; I couldn’t be angry with him if I tried. Who suffers by 
his ill whims? Himself, always. Here, he takes it into his 
head to dislike us, and he won’t come and dine with us. 
What’s the consequence ! He don’t lose much of a dinner — ” 

“ Indeed, I think he loses a very good dinner,” interrupted 
Scrooge’s niece. Everybody else said the same, and they 


A CHRISTMAS CAROL 


53 

must be allowed to have been competent judges, because they 
had just had dinner; and, with the dessert upon the table, were 
clustered round the fire, by lamplight. 

“Well! I’m very glad to hear it,” said Scrooge’s nephew, 
“ because I haven’t any great faith in these young housekeep- 
ers. What do you say. Topper ? ” 

Topper had clearly got his eye upon one of Scrooge’s niece’s 
sisters, for he answered that a bachelor was a wretched out- 
cast, who had no right to express an opinion on the subject. 
Whereat Scrooge’s niece’s sister — the plump one with the lace 
tucker: not the one with the roses — blushed. 

“ Do go on, Fred,” said Scrooge’s niece, clapping her hands. 
“ He never finishes what he begins to say ! He is such a 
ridiculous fellow ! ” 

Scrooge’s nephew revelled in another laugh, and as it was 
impossible to keep the infection off; though the plump sister 
tried hard to do it with aromatic vinegar; his example was 
unanimously followed. 

“ I was only going to say,” said Scrooge’s nephew, “ that 
the consequence of his taking a dislike to us, and not making 
merry with us, is, as I think, that he loses some pleasant mo- 
ments, which could do him no harm. I am sure he loses 
pleasanter companions than he can find in his own thoughts, 
either in his mouldy old office, or his dusty chambers. I mean 
to give him the same chance every year, whether he likes it or 
not, for I pity him. He may rail at Christmas till he dies, 
but he can’t help thinking better of it — I defy him — if he finds 
me going there, in good temper, year after year, and saying 
'Uncle Scrooge, how are you?’ If it only puts him in the 
vein to leave his poor clerk fifty pounds, thafs something ; and 
I think I shook him yesterday.” 

It was their turn to laugh now at the notion of his shaking 
Scrooge. But being thoroughly good-natured, and not much 
caring what they laughed at, so that they laughed at any rate, 
he encouraged them in their merriment, and passed the bottle 
joyously. 

After tea, they had some music. For they were a musical 
family, and knew what they were about, when they sang a 
Glee or Catch, I can assure you: especially Topper, who could 
growl away in the bass like a good one, and never swell the 


A CHRISTMAS CAROL 


54 

large veins in his forehead, or get red in the face over it. 
Scrooge’s niece played well upon the harp ; and played among 
other tunes a simple little air (a mere nothing: you might 
learn to whistle it in two minutes), which had been familiar 
to the child who fetched Scrooge from the boarding-school, as 
he had been reminded by the Ghost of Christmas Past. When 
this strain of music sounded, all the things that Ghost had 
shown him, came upon his mind ; he softened more and more ; 
and thought that if he could have listened to it often, years ago, 
he might have cultivated the kindnesses of life for his own 
happiness with his own hands, without resorting to the sex- 
ton’s spade that buried Jacob Marley. 

But they didn’t devote the whole evening to music. After 
a while they played at forfeits; for it is good to be children 
sometimes, and never better than at Christmas. ’ hen its 
mighty Founder was a child himself. Stop ! T was first 
a gauK at blind-man’s buff. Of course there was. And I no 
more believe Topper was really blind than I believe he had 
eyes in his boots. My opinion is, that it was a done thing be- 
tween him and Scrooge’s nephew: and that the Ghost of 
Christmas Present knew it. The way he went after that 
plump sister in the lace tucker, was an outrage on the credulity 
of human nature. Knocking down the fire-irons, tumbling 
over the chairs, bumping up against the piano, smother- 
ing himself among the curtains, wherever she went, there went 
he. He always knew ’here the plump sister was. He 
wouldn’t catch anybody else. If you had fallen up against him, 
as some of them did, and stood there ; he would have made a 
feint of endeavouring to seize you, which would have been an 
affront to your understanding; and would instantly have sidled 
off in the direction of the plump sister. She often cried out 
that it wasn’t fair ; and it really was not. But when at last, he 
caught her; when, in spite of all her silken rustlings, and her 
rapid flutterings past him, he got her into a corner whence 
there was no escape ; then his conduct was the most execrable. 
F(j^ his pretending not to know her; his pretending that it 
was necessary to touch her head-dress, and further to assure 
himself of her identity by pressing a certain ring upon her 
finger, and a certain chain about her neck ; was vile, monstrous ! 
No doubt she told him her opinion of it, when, another blind 


A CHRISTMAS CAROL 


55 

man being in office, they were so very confidential together, 
behind the curtains. 

Scrooge’s niece was not of the blind-man’s buff party, but 
was made comfortable with a large chair and a foot-stool, in a 
snug corner, where the Ghost and Scrooge were close behind 
her. But she joined in the forfeits, and loved her love to ad- 
miration with all the letters of the alphabet. Likewise at the 
game of How, When, and Where, she was very great, and to 
the secret joy of Scrooge’s nephew, beat her sisters hollow; 
though they were sharp girls too, as Topper could have told 
you. There might have been twenty people there, young and 
old, but they all played, and so did Scrooge; for, wholly for- 
getting in the interest he had in what was going on, that his 
voice made no sound in their ears, he sometimes came out with 
his gues^/Huite loud, and very often guessed quite right, too; 
for the Slit bst needle, best Whitechapel, warranted not to 
cut in the eye, was not sharper than Scrooge: blunt as 1^ took 
it in his head to be. 

The Ghost was greatly pleased to find him in this mood, and 
looked upon him with such favour, that he begged like a boy 
to be allowed to stay until the guests departed. But this the 
Spirit said could not be done. 

Here is a new game,” said Scrooge. “ One half-hour. 
Spirit, only one ! ” 

It is a Game called Yes and No, where Scrooge’s nephew 
had to think of something, and the//‘est must find out what; 
he only answered to their questions yes or no, as the case was. 
The brisk fire of questioning to which he was exposed, elicited 
from him that he was thinking of an animal, a live animal, 
rather a disagreeable animal, a savage animal, an animal that 
growled and grunted sometimes, and talked sometimes, and 
lived in London, and walked about the streets, and wasn’t 
made a show of, and wasn’t led by anybody, and didn’t live in 
a menagerie, and was never killed in a market, and was not a 
horse, or an ass, or a cow,, or a bull, or a tiger, or a dog, o-r a 
pig, or a cat, or a bear. At every fresh question that was li^dt 
to him, this nephew burst into a fresh roar of laughter ; and was 
so inexpressibly tickled, that he was obliged to get off the sofa 
and stamp. At last the plump sister, falling into a similar 
state, cried out : 


A CHRISTMAS CAROL 


56 

“I have found it out. I know what it is, Fred! I know 
what it is ! ” 

“ What is it? ” cried Fred. 

“ It’s your Uncle Scro-o-o-o-oge ! ” 

Which it certainly was. Admiration was the universal senti- 
ment, though some objected that the reply to “ Is it a bear? ” 
ought to have been “Yes;” inasmuch as an answer in the 
negative was sufficient to have diverted their thoughts from 
Mr. Scrooge, supposing they had ever had any tendency that 
way. 

“ He has given us plenty of merriment, I am sure,” said 
Fred, “ and it would be ungrateful not to drink his health. 
Here is a glass of mulled wine ready to our hand at the 
moment ; and I say, ‘ Uncle Scrooge 1 ’ ” 

“ Well ! Uncle Scrooge ! ” they cried. 

“ A Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to the old 
man, whatever he is ! ” said Scrooge’s nephew. “ He wouldn’t 
take it from me, but may he have it, nevertheless. Uncle 
Scrooge I ” 

Uncle Scrooge had imperceptibly become so gay and light 
of heart, that he would have pledged the unconscious com- 
pany in return, and thanked them in an inaudible speech, if 
the Ghost had given him time. But the whole scene passed 
off in the breath of the last word spoken by his nephew; and 
he and the Spirit were again upon their travels. 

Much they saw, and far they went, and many homes they 
visited, but always with a happy end. The Spirit stood beside 
sick-beds, and they were cheerful; on foreign lands, and they 
were close at home ; by struggling men, and they were patient 
in their greater hope; by poverty, and it was rich. In alms- 
house, hospital, jail, in misery’s every refuge, where vain man 
in his little brief authority had not made fast the door, and 
barred the Spirit out, he left his blessing, and taught Scrooge 
his precepts. 

It was a long night, if it were only a night ; but Scrooge had 
his doubts of this, because the Christmas Holidays appeared to 
be condensed into the space of time they passed together. It 
was strange, too, that while Scrooge remained unaltered in his 
outward form, the Ghost grew older, clearly older. Scrooge 
had observed this change, but never spoke of it, until they left 


A CHRISTMAS CAROL 


57 

a children’s Twelfth Night party, when, looking at the Spirit 
as they stood together in an open place, he noticed that its hair 
was grey. 

'' Are spirits’ lives so short ? ” asked Scrooge. 

My life upon this globe, is very brief,” replied the Ghost. 
“ It ends to-night.” 

“ To-night! ” cried Scrooge. 

‘‘To-night at midnight. Hark! The time is drawing 
near.” 

The chimes were ringing the three quarters past eleven at 
that moment. 

“ Forgive me if I am not justified in what I ask,” said 
Scrooge, looking intently at the Spirit’s robe, “ but I see some- 
thing strange, and not belonging to yourself, protruding from 
your skirts. Is it a foot or a claw ! ” 

“ It might be a claw, for the flesh there is upon it,” was the 
Spirit’s sorrowful reply. “ Look here.” 

From the foldings of its robe, it brought two children; 
wretched, abject, frightful, hideous, miserable. They knelt 
down at its feet, and ;clung upon the outside of its garment. 

“ Oh, Man ! look here. Look, look, down here ! ” exclaimed 
the Ghost. 

They were a boy and girl. Yellow, meagre, ragged, scowl- 
ing, wolfish; but prostrate, too, in their humility. Where 
graceful youth should have filled their features out, and 
touched them with its freshest tints, a stale and shrivelled hand, 
like that of age, had pinched, and twisted them, and pulled 
them into shreds. Where angels might have sat enthroned, 
devils lurked, and glared out menacing. No change, no deg- 
radation, no perversion of humanity, in any grade, through 
all the mysteries of wonderful creation, has monsters half so 
horrible and dread. 

Scrooge started back, appalled. Having them shown to him 
in this way, he tried to say they were fine children, but the 
words choked themselves, rather than be parties to a lie of 
such enormous magnitude. 

“ Spirit ! are they yours ? ” Scrooge could say no more. 

“ They are Man’s,” said the Spirit, looking down upon them. 
“ And they cling to me, appealing from their fathers. This 
boy is Ignorance. This girl is Want. Beware them both, and 


58 


A CHRISTMAS CAROL 


all of their degree, but most of all beware this boy, for on his 
brow I see that written which is Doom, unless the writing be 
erased. Deny it ! cried the Spirit, stretching out its hand 
towards the city. Slander those who tell it ye ! Admit it 
for your factious purposes, and make it worse ! And bide the 
end!” 

“ Have they no refuge or resource ? ” cried Scrooge. 

“Are there no prisons?” said the Spirit, turning on him 
for the last time with his own words. “ Are there no work- 
houses ? ” 

The bell struck twelve. 

Scrooge looked about him for the Ghost, and saw it not. 
As the last stroke ceased to vibrate, he remembered the pre- 
diction of old Jacob Marley, and lifting up his eyes, beheld a 
solemn Phantom, draped and hooded, coming, like a mist along 
the ground, towards him. 


STAVE FOUR 


THE LAST OF THE SPIRITS 


HE Phantom slowly, gravely, silently approached. When 



X it came near him, Scrooge bent down upon his knee ; for 
in the very air through which this Spirit moved it seemed to 
scatter gloom and mystery. 

It was shrouded in a deep black garment, which concealed 
its head, its face, its form, and left nothing of it visible save 
one outstretched hand. But for this it would have been dif- 
ficult to detach its figure from the night, and separate it from 
the darkness by which it was surrounded. 

He felt that it was tall and stately when it came beside him, 
and that its mysterious presence filled him with a solemn 
dread. He knew no more, for the Spirit neither spoke nor 
moved. 

“ I am in the presence of the Ghost of Christmas Yet To 
Come ? ” said Scrooge. 

The Spirit answered not, but pointed downward with its 
hand. 

“ You are about to show me shadows of the things that have 


A CHRISTMAS CAROL 59 

not happened, but will happen in the time before us,’’ Scrooge 
pursued. Is that so. Spirit? ” 

The upper portion of the garment was contracted for an 
instant in its folds, as if the Spirit had inclined its head. That 
was the only answer he received. 

Although well used to ghostly company by this time, Scrooge 
feared the silent shape so much that his legs trembled beneath 
him, and he found that he could hardly stand when he prepared 
to follow it. The Spirit paused a moment, as observing his 
condition, and giving him time to recover. 

But Scrooge was all the worse for this. It thrilled him with 
a vague uncertain horror, to know that behind the dusky shroud 
there were ghostly eyes intently fixed upon him, while he, 
though he stretched his own to the utmost, could see nothing 
but a spectral hand and one great heap of black. 

“ Ghost of the Future ! ” he exclaimed, I fear you more 
than any Spectre I have seen. But, as I know your purpose 
is \o do me good, and as I hope to live to be another man from 
what I was, I am prepared to bear you company, and do it with 
a thankful heart. Will you not speak to me?” 

It gave him no reply. The hand was pointed straight before 
them. 

Lead on ! ” said Scrooge. “ Lead on ! The night is wan- 
ing fast, and it is precious time to me, I know. Lead on. 
Spirit!” 

The Phantom moved away as it had come towards him. 
Scrooge followed in the shadow of its dress, which bore him 
up, he thought, and carried him along. 

They scarcely seemed to enter the City; for the City rather 
seemed to spring up about them, and encompass them of its 
own act. But there they were, in the heart of it ; on ’Change, 
amongst the merchants ; who hurried up and down, and chinked 
the money in their pockets, and conversed in groups, and looked 
at their watches, and trifled thoughtfully with their great gold 
seals; and so forth, as Scrooge had seen them often. 

The Spirit stopped beside one little knot of business men. 
Observing that the hand was pointed to them, Scrooge ad- 
vanced to listen to their talk. 

No,” said a great fat man with a monstrous chin, I don’t 
know much about it, either way. I only know he’s dead.” 


6o 


A CHRISTMAS CAROL 


When did he die ? ” inquired another. 

“ Last night, I believe.” 

“ Why, what was the matter with him ? ” asked a third, 
taking a vast quantity of snuff out of a very large snuff-box. 
“ I thought he’d never die.” 

“ God knows,” said the first, with a yawn. 

“ What has he done with his money ? ” asked a red-faced 
gentleman with a pendulous excrescence on the end of his nose, 
that shook like the gills of a turkey-cock. 

'' I haven’t heard,” said the man with the large chin, yawning 
again. Left it to his Company, perhaps. He hasn’t left it 
to me. That’s all I know.” 

This pleasantry was received with a general laugh. 

It’s likely to be a very cheap funeral,” said the same 
speaker ; “ for upon my life I don’t know of anybody to go 
to it. Suppose we make up a party and volunteer ? ” 

“ I don’t mind going if a lunch is provided,” observed the 
gentleman with the excrescence on his nose. But I must be 
fed, if I make one.” 

Another laugh. 

‘‘ Well, I am the most disinterested among you, after all,” 
said the first speaker, “ for I never wear black gloves, and I 
never eat lunch. But I’ll offer to go, if anybody else will. 
When I come to think of it, I’m not at all sure that I wasn’t 
his most particular friend; for we used to stop and speak 
whenever we met. Bye, bye ! ” 

Speakers and listeners strolled away, and mixed with other 
groups. Scrooge knew the men, and looked towards the Spirit 
for an explanation. 

The Phantom glided on into a street. Its fingers pointed to 
two persons meeting. Scrooge listened again, thinking that 
the explanation might lie here. 

He knew these men, also, perfectly. They were men of 
business: very wealthy, and of great importance. He had 
made a point always of standing well in their esteem: in a 
business point of view, that is ; strictly in a business point of 
view. 

“ How are you ? ” said one. 

“ How are you ? ” returned the other. 


A CHRISTMAS CAROL 6i 

“Well!’" said the first. “Old Scratch has got his own at 
last, hey?’* 

“So I am told,” returned the second. “Cold, isn’t it?” 

“ Seasonable for Christmas time. You’re not a skater, I 
suppose ? ” 

No. No. Something else to think of. Good morning! ” 

Not another word. That was their meeting, their conver- 
sation, and their parting. 

Scrooge was at first inclined to be surprised that the Spirit 
should attach importance to conversations apparently so trivial ; 
but feeling assured that they must have some hidden purpose, 
he set himself to consider what it was likely to be. They could 
scarcely be supposed to have any bearing on the death of 
Jacob, his old partner, for that was Past, and the Ghost’s prov- 
ince was the Future. Nor could he think of any one im- 
mediately connected with himself, to whom he could apply 
them. But nothing doubting that to whomsoever they applied 
they had some latent moral for his own improvement, he re- 
solved to treasure up every word he heard, and everything he 
saw ; and especially to observe the shadow of himself when it 
appeared. For he had an expectation that the conduct of his 
future self would give him the clue he missed, and would 
render the solution of these riddles easy. 

He looked about in that very place for his own image ; but 
another man stood in his accustomed corner, and though the 
clock pointed to his usual time of day for being there, he saw 
no likeness of himself among the multitudes that poured in 
through the Porch. It gave him little surprise, however; for 
he had been revolving in his mind a change of life, and thought 
and hoped he saw his new-born resolutions carried out in 
this. 

Quiet and dark, beside him stood the Phantom, with its 
outstretched hand. When he roused himself from his thought- 
ful quest, he fancied from the turn of the hand, and its 
situation in reference to himself, that the Unseen Eyes were 
looking at him keenly. It made him shudder, and feel very 
cold. 

They left the busy scene, and went into an obscure part of 
the town, where Scrooge had never penetrated before, although 


62 


A CHRISTMAS CAROL 


he recognised its situation, . and its bad repute. The ways 
were foul and narrow; the shops and houses wretched; the 
people half-naked, drunken, slipshod, ugly. Alleys and arch- 
ways, like so many cesspools, disgorged their offences of smell, 
and dirt, and life, upon the straggling streets; and the whole 
quarter reeked with crime, with filth, and misery. 

Far in this den of infamous resort, there was a low-browed, 
beetling shop, below a pent-house roof, where iron, old rags, 
bottles, bones, and greasy offal, were bought. Upon the floor 
within, were piled up heaps of rusty keys, nails, chains, hinges, 
files, scales, weights, and refuse iron of all kinds. Secrets that 
few would like to scrutinise were bred and hidden in mountains 
of unseemly rags, masses of corrupted fat, and sepulchres of 
bones. Sitting in among the wares he dealt in, by a charcoal- 
stove, made of old bricks, was a grey-haired rascal, nearly 
seventy years of age ; who had screened himself from the cold 
air without, by a frousy curtaining of miscellaneous tatters, 
hung upon a line; and smoked his pipe in all the luxury of 
calm retirement. 

Scrooge and the Phantom came into the presence of this 
man, just as a woman with a heavy bundle slunk into the shop. 
But she had scarcely entered, when another woman, similarly 
laden, came in too ; and she was closely followed by a man in 
faded black, who was no less startled by the sight of them, 
than they had been upon the recognition of each other. After 
a short period of blank astonishment, in which the old man 
with the pipe had joined them, they all three burst into 
a laugh. 

“ Let the charwoman alone to be the first ! ’’ cried she who 
had entered first. ‘‘ Let the laundress alone to be the second ; 
and let the undertaker’s man alone to be the third. Look here, 
old Joe, here’s a chance! If we haven’t all three met here 
without meaning it ! ” 

“ You couldn’t have met in a better place,” said old Joe, 
removing his pipe from his mouth. Come into the parlour. 
You were made free of it long ago, you know; and the other 
two an’t strangers. Stop till I shut the door of the shop. Ah ! 
How it skreeks ! There an’t such a rusty bit of metal in the 
place as its own hinges, I believe ; and I’m sure there’s no such 
old bones here, as mine. Ha, ha! We’re all suitable to our 


A CHRISTMAS CAROL 63 

calling, we’re well matched. Come into the parlour. Come 
into the parlour.” 

The parlour was the space behind the screen of rags. The 
old man raked the fire together with an old stair-rod, and hav- 
ing trimmed his smoky lamp (for it was night), with the stemi 
of his pipe, put it in his mouth again. 

While he did this, the women who had already spoken threw 
her bundle on the floor, and sat down in a flaunting manner on 
a stool ; crossing her elbows on her knees, and looking with a 
bold defiance at the other two. 

“What odds then! What odds, Mrs. Dilber?” said the 
woman. “ Every person has a right to take care of themselves. 
He always did ! ” 

“ That’s true, indeed ! ” said the laundress. “ No man more 
so.” 

“ Why, then, don’t stand staring as if you was afraid, 
woman; who’s the wiser? We’re not going to pick holes in 
each other’s coats, I suppose ? ” 

“ No, indeed I ” said Mrs. Dilber and the man together. 
“ We should hope not.” 

“ Very well, then ! ” cried the woman. “ That’s enough. 
Who’s the worse for the loss of a few things like these? Not 
a dead man, I suppose.” 

“ No, indeed,” said Mrs. Dilber, laughing. 

“If he wanted to keep ’em after he was dead, a wicked old 
screw,” pursued the woman, “ why wasn’t he natural in his 
lifetime? If he had been, he’d have had somebody to look 
after him when he was struck with Death, instead of lying 
gasping out his last there, alone by himself.” 

“ It’s the truest word that ever was spoke,” said Mrs. Dilber. 
“ It’s a judgment on him.” 

“ I wish it was a little heavier one,” replied the woman ; 
“ and it should have been, you may depend upon it, if I could 
have laid my hands on anything else. Open that bundle, old 
Joe, and let me know the value of it. Speak out plain. I’m 
not afraid to be the first, nor afraid for them to see it. We 
knew pretty well that we were helping ourselves, before we 
met here, I believe. It’s no sin. Open the bundle, Joe.” 

But the gallantry of her friends would not allow of this; 
and the man in faded black, mounting the breach first, pro- 


A CHRISTMAS CAROL 


64 

duced his plunder. It was not extensive. A seal or two, a 
pencil-case, a pair of sleeve-buttons, and a brooch of no great 
value, were all. They were severally examined and appraised 
by old Joe, who chalked the sums he was disposed to give for 
each, upon the wall, and added them up into a total when he 
found there was nothing more to come. 

‘‘ That’s your account,” said Joe, and I wouldn’t give 
another sixpence, if I was to be boiled for not doing it. Who’s 
next?” 

Mrs. Dilber was next. Sheets and towels, a little wearing 
apparel, two old-fashioned silver teaspoons, a pair of sugar- 
tongs, and a few boots. Her account was stated on the wall 
in the same manner. 

“ I always give too much to ladies. It’s a weakness of mine, 
and that’s the way I ruin myself,” said Joe. “ That’s your 
account. If you ask me for another penny, and made it an 
open question. I’d repent of being so liberal and knock off 
half-a-crown.” 

“ And now undo my bundle, Joe,” said the first woman. 

Joe went down on his knees for the greater convenience of 
opening it, and having unfastened a great many knots, dragged 
out a large and heavy roll of some dark stuff. 

“ What do you call this ? ” said Joe. “ Bed-curtains ! ” 

“ Ah ! ” returned the woman, laughing and leaning forward 
on her crossed arms. Bed-curtains ! ” 

You don’t mean to say you took ’em down, rings and all, 
with him lying there?” said Joe. 

'‘Yes, I do,” replied the woman. ‘‘Why not?” 

" You were born to make your fortune,” said Joe, " and 
you’ll certainly do it.” 

" I certainly shan’t hold my hand, when I can get anything 
in it by reaching it out, for the sake of such a man as he was, 
I promise you, Joe,” returned the woman coolly. “ Don’t drop 
that oil upon the blankets, now.” 

"His blankets?” asked Joe. 

"Whose else’s do you think?” replied the woman. "He 
isn’t likely to take cold without ’em, I dare say.” 

"I hope he didn’t die of anything catching? Eh?” said 
old Joe, stopping in his work, and looking up. 

" Don’t you be afraid of that,” returned the woman. " I 


A CHRISTMAS CAROL 


65 

an’t so fond of his company that I’d loiter about him for such 
things, if he did. Ah! you may look through that shirt till 
your eyes ache ; but you won’t find a hole in it, nor a thread- 
bare place. It’s the best he had, and a fine one too. They’d 
have wasted it, if it hadn’t been for me.” 

“ What do you call wasting of it? ” asked old Joe. 

'' Putting it on him to be buried in, to be sure,” replied the 
woman with a laugh. “ Somebody was fool enough to do it, 
but I took it off again. If calico an’t good enough for such a 
purpose, it isn’t good enough for anything. It’s quite as be- 
coming to the body. He can’t look uglier than he did in that 
one.” 

Scrooge listened to this dialogue in horror. As they sat 
grouped about their spoil, in the scanty light afforded by the 
old man’s lamp, he viewed them with a detestation and disgust, 
which could hardly have been greater, though they had been, 
obscene demons, marketing the corpse itself. 

Ha, ha ! ” laughed the same woman, when old Joe, pro- 
ducing a flannel bag with money in it, told out their several 
gains upon the ground. This is the end of it, you see ! He 
frightened every one away from him when he was alive, to 
profit us when he was dead I Ha, ha, ha 1 ” 

‘‘ Spirit ! ” said Scrooge, shuddering from head to foot. ‘‘ I 
see, I see. The case of this unhappy man might be my own. 
My life tends that way, now. Merciful Heaven, what is this I ” 

He recoiled in terror, for the scene had changed, and now 
he almost touched a bed: a bare, uncurtained bed: on which, 
beneath a ragged sheet, there lay a something covered up, 
which, though it was dumb, announced itself in awful language. 

The room was very dark, too dark to be observed with any 
accuracy, though Scrooge glanced round it in obedience to a 
secret impulse, anxious to know what kind of room it was. A 
pale light, rising in the outer air, fell straight upon the bed; 
and on it, plundered and bereft, unwatched, unwept, uncared 
for, was the body of this man. 

Scrooge glanced towards the Phantom. Its steady hand was 
pointed to the head. The cover was so carelessly adjusted that 
the slightest rising of it, the motion of a finger upon Scrooge’s 
part, would have disclosed the face. He thought of it, felt 
how easy it would be to do, and longed to do it; but had no 


66 


A CHRISTMAS CAROL 

more power to withdraw the veil than to dismiss the spectre at 
his side. 

Oh, cold, cold, rigid, dreadful Death, set up thine altar 
here, and dress it with such terrors as thou hast at thy com- 
mand : for this is thy dominion ! But of the loved, revered, 
and honoured head, thou canst not turn one hair to thy dread 
purposes, or make one feature odious. It is not that the 
hand is heavy and will fall down when released ; it is not that 
the heart and pulse are still ; but that the hand was open, gen- 
erous, and true; the heart brave, warm, and tender; and the 
pulse a man’s. Strike, Shadow, strike! And see his good 
deeds springing from the wound, to sow the world with life 
immortal I 

No voice pronounced these words in Scrooge’s ears, and yet 
he heard them when he looked upon the bed. He thought, if 
this man could be raised up now, what would be his foremost 
thoughts? Avarice, hard dealing, griping cares? They have 
brought him to a rich end, truly ! 

He lay, in the dark empty house, with not a man, a woman, 
or a child, to say that he was kind to me in this or that, and 
for the memory of one kind word I will be kind to him. A 
cat was tearing at the door, and there was a sound of gnawing 
rats beneath the hearth-stone. What they wanted in the room 
of death, and why they were so restless and disturbed, Scrooge 
did not dare to think. 

“ Spirit I ” he said, “ this is a fearful place. In leaving it, 
I shall not leave its lesson, trust me. Let us go 1 ” 

Still the Ghost pointed with an unmoved finger to the head. 

I understand you,” Scrooge returned, “ and I would do it, 
if I could. But I have not the power. Spirit. I have not the 
power.” 

Again it seemed to look upon him. 

If there is any person in the town, who feels emotion 
caused by this man’s death,” said Scrooge quite agonised, 

show that person to me. Spirit, I beseech you ! ” 

The Phantom spread its dark robe before him for a moment, 
like a wing ; and withdrawing it, revealed a room by daylight, 
where a mother and her children were. 

She was expecting some one, and with anxious eagerness; 
for she walked up and down the room ; started at every sound ; 


A CHRISTMAS CAROL 


67 

looked out from the window ; glanced at the clock ; tried, but in 
vain, to work with her needle ; and could hardly bear the voices 
of the children in their play. 

At length the long-expected knock was heard. She hurried 
to the door, and met her husband ; a man whose face was care- 
worn and depressed, though he was young. There was a re- 
markable expression in it now; a kind of serious delight of 
which he felt ashamed, and which he struggled to repress. 

He sat down to the dinner that had been hoarding for him 
by the fire; and when she asked him faintly what news (which 
was not until after a long silence), he appeared embarrassed 
how to answer. 

Is it good,” she said, ‘‘ or bad ? ” — to help him. 

Bad,” he answered. 

“ We are quite ruined? ” 

“ No. There is hope yet, Caroline.” 

If he relents,” she said, amazed, “ there is ! Nothing is 
past hope, if such a miracle has happened.” 

He is past relenting,” said her husband. He is dead.” 

She was a mild and patient creature if her face spoke truth ; 
but she was thankful in her soul to hear it, and she said so, 
with clasped hands. She prayed forgiveness the next moment, 
and was sorry ; but the first was the emotion of her heart. 

“ What the half-drunken woman whom I told you of last 
night, said to me, when I tried to see him and obtain a week's 
delay; and what I thought was a mere excuse to avoid me; 
turns out to have been quite true. He was not only very ill, 
but dying, then.” 

“ To whom will our debt be transferred? ” 

I don’t know. But before that time we shall be ready 
with the money; and even though we were not, it would 
be bad fortune indeed to find so merciless a creditor in his 
successor. We may sleep to-night with light hearts, Caro- 
line ! ” 

Yes. Soften it as they would, their hearts were lighter. 
The children’s faces, hushed, and clustered round to hear what 
they so little understood, were brighter; and it was a happier 
house for this man’s death ! The only emotion that the Ghost 
could show him, caused by the event, was one of pleasure. 

“ Let me see some tenderness connected with a death,” said 


68 


A CHRISTMAS CAROL 


Scrooge; “or that dark chamber, Spirit, which we left just 
now, will be for ever present to me.” 

The Ghost conducted him through several streets familiar to 
his feet ; and as they went along, Scrooge looked here and there 
to find himself, but nowhere was he to be seen. They entered 
poor Bob Cratchit’s house; the dwelling he had visited be- 
fore ; and found the mother and the children seated round the 
fire. 

Quiet. Very quiet. The noisy little Cratchits were as still 
as statues in one corner, and sat looking up at Peter, who had 
a book before him. The mother and her daughters were en- 
gaged in sewing. But surely they were very quiet ! 

“ ' And He took a child, and set him in the midst of them.' ” 

Where had Scrooge heard those words ? He had not 
dreamed them. The boy must have read them out, as he and 
the Spirit crossed the threshold. Why did he not go on ? 

The mother laid her work upon the table, and put her hand 
up to her face. 

“ The colour hurts my eyes,” she said. 

The colour? Ah, poor Tiny Tim! 

“ They’re better now again,” said Cratchit’s wife. ‘‘ It 
makes them weak by candlelight; and I wouldn’t show weak 
eyes to your father when he comes home, for the world. It 
must be near his time.” 

“ Past it rather,” Peter answered, shutting up his book. 
“ But I think he’s walked a little slower than he used, these 
few last evenings, mother.” 

They were very quiet again. At last she said, and in a 
steady cheerful voice, that only faltered once: 

“ I have known him walk with — I have known him walk 
with Tiny Tim upon his shoulder, very fast indeed.” 

“ And so have I,” cried Peter. “ Often.” 

“ And so have I,” exclaimed another. So had all. 

“ But he was very light to carry,” she resumed, intent upon 
her work, “ and his father loved him so, that it was no trouble 
— no trouble. And there is your father at the door ! ” 

She hurried out to meet him ; and little Bob in his comforter 
— he had need of it, poor fellow — came in. His tea was ready 
for him on the hob, and they all tried who should help him to 
it most. Then the two young Cratchits got upon his knees and 


A CHRISTMAS CAROL 69 

laid, each child a little cheek, against his face, as if they said, 
“ Don’t mind it, father. Don’t be grieved ! ” 

Bob was very cheerful with them, and spoke pleasantly to 
all the family. He looked at the work upon the table, and 
praised the industry and speed of Mrs. Cratchit and the girls. 
They would be done long before Sunday he said. 

‘‘ Sunday! You went to-day then, Robert?” said his wife. 

“ Yes, my dear,” returned Bob. “ I wish you could have 
gone. It would have done you good to see how green a place 
it is. But you’ll see it often. I promised him that I would 
walk there on a Sunday. My little, little child ! ” cried Bob. 
‘‘ My little child 1 ” 

He broke down all at once. He couldn’t help it. If he 
could have helped it, he and his child would have been farther 
apart perhaps than they were. 

He left the room, and went upstairs into the room above, 
which was lighted cheerfully, and hung with Christmas. There 
was a chair set close beside the child, and there were signs of 
some one having been there, lately. Poor Bob sat down in it, 
and when he had thought a little and composed himself, he 
kissed the little face. He was reconciled to what had hap- 
pened, and went down again quite happy. 

They drew about the fire, and talked; the girls and mother 
working still. Bob told them of the extraordinary kindness 
of Mr. Scrooge’s nephew, whom he had scarcely seen but once, 
and who, meeting him in the street that day, and seeing that 
he looked a little — “ just a little down, you know,” said Bob, 
inquired what had happened to distress him. “ On which,” 
said Bob, “ for he is the pleasantest-spoken gentleman you 
ever heard, I told him. ‘ I am heartily sorry for it, Mr. 
Cratchit,’ he said, ‘ and heartily sorry for your good wife.’ By 
the bye, how he ever knew that, I don’t know.” 

‘‘Knew what, my dear?” 

“ Why, that you were a good wife,” replied Bob. 

“ Everybody knows that ! ” said Peter. 

“ Very well observed, my boy ! ” cried Bob. “ I hope they 
do. ‘ Heartily sorry,’ he said, ‘ for your good wife. If I can 
be of service to you in any way,’ he said, giving me his card, 
‘ that’s where I live. Pray come to me.’ Now, it wasn’t,” 
cried Bob, “ for the sake of anything he might be able to do for 


A CHRISTMAS CAROL 


70 

us, so much as for his kind way, that this was quite delightful. 
It really seemed as if he had known our Tiny Tim, and felt 
with us.” 

Tm sure he’s a good soul ! ” said Mrs. Cratchit. 

“ You would be surer of it, my dear,” returned Bob, if 
you saw and spoke to him. I shouldn’t be at all surprised, 
mark what I say, if he got Peter a better situation.” 

“ Only hear that, Peter,” said Mrs. Cratchit. 

“ And then,” cried one of the girls, ‘‘ Peter will be keeping 
company with some one, and setting up for himself.” 

“ Get along with you ! ” retorted Peter, grinning. 

‘‘It’s just as likely as not,” said Bob, “one of these days; 
though there’s plenty of time for that, my dear. But however 
and whenever we part from one another, I am sure we shall 
none of us forget poor Tiny Tim — shall we — or this first part- 
ing that there was among us ? ” 

“ Never, father ! ” cried they all. 

“ And I know,” said Bob, “ I know, my dears, that when 
we recollect how patient and how mild he was; although he 
was a little, little child; we shall not quarrel easily among 
ourselves, and forget poor Tiny Tim in doing it.” 

“ No, never, father! ” they all cried again. 

“ I am very happy,” said little Bob, “ I am very happy ! ” 

Mrs. Cratchit kissed him, his daughters kissed him, the two 
young Cratchits kissed him, and Peter and himself shook hands. 
Spirit of Tiny Tim, thy childish essence was from God! 

“ Spectre,” said Scrooge, “ something informs me that our 
parting moment is at hand. I know it, but I know not how. 
Tell me what man that was whom we saw lying dead? ” 

The Ghost of Christmas Yet To Come conveyed him, as be- 
fore — though at a different time, he thought: indeed, there 
seemed no order in these latter visions, save that they were in 
the Future — into the resorts of business men, but showed him 
not himself. Indeed, the Spirit did not stay for anything, but 
went straight on, as to the end just now desired, until besought 
by Scrooge to tarry for a moment. 

“ This court,” said Scrooge, “ through which we hurry now, 
is where my place of occupation is, and has been for a length 
of time. I see the house. Let me behold what I shall be, in 
days to come ! ” 



“THE SPIRIT STOOD AMONG THE GRAVES, AND POINTED DOWN 

TO ONE”— 7/ 




A CHRISTMAS CAROL 


71 


The Spirit stopped ; the hand was pointed elsewhere. 

“ The house is yonder/' Scrooge exclaimed. “ Why do you 
point away ? ” 

The inexorable finger underwent no change. 

Scrooge hastened to the window of his office, and looked in. 
It was an office still, but not his. The furniture was not the 
same, and the figure in the chair was not himself. The Phan- 
tom pointed as before. 

He joined it once again, and wondering why and whither he 
had gone, accompanied it until they reached an iron gate. He 
paused to look round before entering. 

A churchyard. Here, then, the wretched man whose name 
he had now to learn, lay underneath the ground. It was a 
worthy place. Walled in by houses; overrun by grass and 
weeds, the growth of vegetation’s death, not life; choked up 
with too much burying; fat with repleted appetite. A worthy 
place ! 

The Spirit stood among the graves, and pointed down to 
One. He advanced towards it trembling. The Phantom was 
exactly as it had been, but he dreaded that he saw new meaning 
in its solemn shape. 

“ Before I draw nearer to that stone to which you point,” 
said Scrooge, “ answer me one question. Are these the shad- 
ows of the things that Will be, or are they shadows of things 
that May be, only ? ” 

Still the Ghost pointed downward to the grave by which it 
stood. 

‘‘ Men’s courses will foreshadow certain ends, to which, if 
persevered in, they must lead,” said Scrooge. “ But if the 
courses be departed from, the ends will change. Say it is 
thus with what you show me ! ” 

The Spirit was immovable as ever. 

Scrooge crept towards it, trembling as he went ; and follow- 
ing the finger, read upon the stone of the neglected grave his 
own name, Ebenezer Scrooge. 

'' Am / that man who lay upon the bed ? ” he cried, upon 
his knees. 

The finger pointed from the grave to him, and back again. 

‘‘No, Spirit! Oh, no, no!” 

The finger still was there. 


72 


A CHRISTMAS CAROL 


Spirit ! ’’ he cried, tight clutching at its robe, hear me ! 
I am not the man I was. I will not be the man I must have 
been but for this intercourse. Why show me this, if I am 
past all hope ! ” 

For the first time the hand appeared to shake. 

“ Good Spirit,” he pursued, as down upon the ground he fell 
before it: “Your nature intercedes for me, and pities me. 
Assure me that I yet may change these shadows you have 
shown me, by an altered life ! ” 

The kind hand trembled. 

“ I will honour Christmas in my heart, and try to keep it all 
the year. I will live in the Past, the Present, and the Future. 
The Spirits of all Three shall strive within me. I will not shut 
out the lessons that they teach. Oh, tell me I may sponge 
away the writing on this stone ! ” 

In his agony, he caught the spectral hand. It sought to free 
itself, but he was strong in his entreaty, and detained it. The 
Spirit, stronger yet, repulsed him. 

Holding up his hands in one last prayer to have his fate re- 
versed, he saw an alteration in the Phantom’s hood and dress. 
It shrank, collapsed, and dwindled down into a bedpost. 


STAVE FIVE 


THE END OF IT 


ES ! and the bedpost was his own. The bed was his own. 



X the room was his own. Best and happiest of all, the Time 
before him was his own, to make amends in ! 

“ I will live in the Past, the Present, and the Future ! ” 
Scrooge repeated, as he scrambled out of bed. “ The Spirits 
of all Three shall strive within me. Oh, Jacob Marley! 
Heaven, and the Christmas Time be praised for this ! I say it 
on my knees, old Jacob, on my knees ! ” 

He was so fluttered and so glowing with his good intentions, 
that his broken voice would scarcely answer to his call. He 
had been sobbing violently in his conflict with the Spirit, and 
his face was wet with tears. 

“ They are not torn down,” cried Scrooge, folding one of 


A CHRISTMAS CAROL 73 

his bed-curtains in his arms, “ they are not torn down, rings 
and all. They are here : I am here : the shadows of the things 
that would have been, may be dispelled. They will be. I know 
they will ! ” 

His hands were busy with his garments all this time : turning 
them inside out, putting them on upside down, tearing them, 
mislaying them, making them parties to every kind of extrav- 
agance. 

‘‘ I don’t know what to do ! ” cried Scrooge, laughing and 
crying in the same breath; and making a perfect Laocodn of 
himself with his stockings. ‘‘ I am as light as a feather, I 
am as happy as an angel, I am as merry as a schoolboy. I am as 
giddy as a drunken man. A Merry Christmas to everybody ! 
A Happy New Year to all the world. Hallo here! Whoop! 
Hallo ! ” 

He had frisked into the sitting-room, and was now standing 
there: perfectly winded. 

“ There’s the saucepan that the gruel was in ! ” cried 
Scrooge, starting otf again, and frisking round the fireplace. 
‘‘ There’s the door, by which the Ghost of Jacob Marley en- 
tered ! There’s the corner where the Ghost of Christmas Pres- 
ent sat! There’s the window where I saw the wandering 
Spirits ! It’s all right, it’s all true, it all happened. Ha, ha, 
ha!” 

Really, for a man who had been out of practice for so many 
years, it was a splendid laugh, a most illustrious laugh. The 
father of a long, long line of brilliant laughs ! 

'' I don’t know what day of the month it is ! ” said Scrooge. 
“ I don’t know how long I’ve been among the Spirits. I don’t 
know anything. I’m quite a baby. Never mind. I don’t 
care. I’d rather be a baby. Hallo ! Whoop ! Hallo here ! ” 

He was checked in his transports by the churches ringing 
out the lustiest peals he had ever heard. Clash, clang, ham- 
mer, ding, dong, bell. Bell, dong, ding, hammer, clang, clash ! 
Oh, glorious, glorious ! 

Running to the window, he opened it, and put out his head. 
No fog, no mist; clear, bright, jovial, stirring, cold; cold, 
piping, for the blood to dance to; golden sunlight; heavenly 
sky; sweet fresh air; merry bells. Oh, glorious. Glorious! 

“What’s to-day?” cried Scrooge, calling downward to a 


74 A CHRISTMAS CAROL 

boy in Sunday clothes, who perhaps had loitered in to look 
about him. 

“ Eh ? ” returned the boy, with all his might of wonder. 
Whaf s to-day, my fine fellow ? ’’ said Scrooge. 

“ To-day ! ” replied the boy. “ Why, Christmas Day.’’ 

“ It’s Christmas Day ! ” said Scrooge to himself. “ I haven’t 
missed it. The Spirits have done it all in one night. They 
can do anything they like. Of course they can. Of course 
they can. Hallo, my fine fellow ! ” 

Hallo ! ” returned the boy. 

“ Do you know the Poulterer’s, in the next street but one, 
at the corner ? ” Scrooge inquired. 

“ I should hope I did,” replied the lad. 

An intelligent boy ! ” said Scrooge. “ A remarkable boy ! 
Do you know whether they’ve sold the prize Turkey that was 
hanging up there? Not the little prize Turkey : the big one? ” 

“ What, the one as big as me ? ” returned the boy. 

“ What a delightful boy ! ” said Scrooge. It’s a pleasure 
to talk to him. Yes, my buck! ” 

It’s hanging there now,” replied the boy. 

“ Is it? ” said Scrooge. “Go and buy it.” 

“ Walk-ER ! ” exclaimed the boy. 

“ No, no,” said Scrooge, “ I am in earnest. Go and buy it, 
and tell ’em to bring it here, that I may give them the direc- 
tion where to take it. Come back with the man, and I’ll give 
you a shilling. Come back with him in less than five minutes, 
and I’ll give you half-a-crown I ” 

The boy was off like a shot. He must have had a steady 
hand at a trigger who could have got a shot off half so fast. 

“ I’ll send it to Bob Cratchit’s ! ” whispered Scrooge, rub- 
bing his hands, and splitting with a laugh. “ He shan’t 
know who sends it. It’s twice the size of Tiny Tim. Joe 
Miller never made such a joke as sending it to Bob’s will 
be!” 

The hand in which he wrote the address was not a steady 
one, but write it he did, somehow, and went downstairs to 
open the street door, ready for the coming of the poulterer’s 
man. As he stood there, waiting his arrival, the knocker 
caught his eye. 

“ I shall love it, as long as I live ! ” cried Scrooge, patting 


A CHRISTMAS CAROL 75 

it with his hand. I scarcely ever looked at it before. What 
an honest expression it has in its face! It’s a wonderful 
knocker! — Here’s the Turkey. Hallo! Whoop! How are 
you ! Merry Christmas ! ” 

It was a Turkey ! He could never have stood upon his 
legs, that bird. He would have snapped ’em short off in a 
minute, like sticks of sealing-wax. 

Why, it’s impossible to carry that to Camden Town,” said 
Scrooge. '' You must have a cab.” 

The chuckle with which he said this, and the chuckle with 
which he paid for the turkey, and the chuckle with which he 
paid for the cab, and the chuckle with which he recompensed 
the boy, were only to be exceeded by the chuckle with which 
he sat down breathless in his chair again, and chuckled till he 
cried. 

Shaving was not an easy task, for his hand continued to 
shake very much; and shaving requires attention, even when 
you don’t dance while you are at it. But if he had cut the end 
of his nose off, he would have put a piece of sticking-plaster 
over it, and been quite satisfied. 

He dressed himself '' all in his best,” and at last got out 
into the streets. The people were by this time pouring forth, 
as he had seen them with the Ghost of Christmas Present; 
and walking with his hands behind him, Scrooge regarded 
every one with a delighted smile. He looked so irresistibly 
pleasant, in a word, that three or four good-humoured fellows 
said, “ Good morning. Sir ! A Merry Christmas to you ! ” 
And Scrooge said often, afterwards, that of all the blithe 
sounds he had ever heard, those were the blithest in his ears. 

He had not gone far, when coming on towards him he 
beheld the portly gentleman, who had walked into his count- 
ing-house the day before and said, “ Scrooge and Marley’s, 
I believe ? ” It sent a pang across his heart to think how this 
old gentleman would look upon him when they met; but he 
knew what path lay straight before him, and he took it. 

My dear Sir,” said Scrooge, quickening his pace, and 
taking the old gentleman by both his hands. “ How do you 
do? I hope you succeeded yesterday. It was very kind of 
you. A Merry Christmas to you, Sir ! ” 

'' Mr. Scrooge ? ” 


A CHRISTMAS CAROL 


76 

Yes,” said Scrooge. That is my name, and I fear it 
may not be pleasant to you. Allow me to ask your pardon. 
And will you have the goodness ” — here Scrooge whispered 
in his ear. 

“ Lord bless me,” cried the gentleman, as if his breath were 
gone. “ My dear Mr. Scrooge, are you serious ? ” 

“If you please,” said Scrooge. “Not a farthing less. A 
great many back-payments are included in it, I assure you. 
Will you do me that favour?” 

“ My dear Sir,” said the other, shaking hands with him. 
“ I don’t know what to say to such munifi — ” 

“ Don’t say anything, please,” retorted Scrooge. “ Come 
and see me. Will you come and see me?” 

“ I will ! ” cried the old gentleman. And it was clear he 
meant to do it. 

“ Thank’ee,” said Scrooge. “ I am much obliged to you. I 
thank you fifty times. Bless you ! ” 

He went to church, and walked about the streets, and 
watched the people hurrying to and fro, and patted children 
on the head, and questioned beggars, and looked down into 
the kitchens of houses, and up to the windows; and found 
that everything could yield him pleasure. He had never 
dreamed that any walk — that anything — could give him so 
much happiness. In the afternoon, he turned his steps to- 
wards his nephew’s house. 

He passed the door a dozen times, before he had the courage 
to go up and knock. But he made a dash, and did it: 

“ Is your master at home, my dear ? ” said Scrooge to the 
girl. Nice girl! Very. 

“Yes, Sir.” 

“ Where is he, my love ? ” said Scrooge. 

“ He’s in the dining-room. Sir, along with mistress. I’ll 
show you upstairs, if you please.” 

“ Thank’ee. He knows me,” said Scrooge, with his hand 
already on the dining-room lock. “ I’ll go in here, my dear.” 

He turned it gently, and sidled his face in, round the door. 
They were looking at the table (which was spread out in great 
array) ; for these young housekeepers are always nervous on 
such points, and like to see that everything is right. 

“ Fred ! ” said Scrooge. 


A CHRISTMAS CAROL 


77 

Dear heart alive, how his niece by marriage started I 
Scrooge had forgotten, for the moment, about her sitting in 
the corner with the footstool, or he wouldn’t have done it, on 
any account. 

Why bless my soul ! ” cried Fred, “ who’s that? ” 

It’s I. Your uncle Scrooge. I have come to dinner. 
Will you let me in, Fred?” 

Let him in ! It is a mercy he didn’t shake his arm off. He 
was at home in five minutes. Nothing could be heartier. 
His niece looked just the same. So did Topper when he came. 
So did the plump sister, when she came. So did every one 
when they came. Wonderful party, wonderful games, won- 
derful unanimity, won-der-ful happiness ! 

But he was early at the office next morning. Oh, he was 
early there. If he could only be there first, and catch Bob 
Cratchit coming late! That was the thing he had set his 
heart upon. 

And he did it ; yes he did ! The clock struck nine. No Bob. 
A quarter past. No Bob. He was full eighteen minutes and 
a half behind his time. Scrooge sat with his door wide open, 
that he might see him come into the Tank. 

His hat was off, before he opened the door; his comforter 
too. He was on his stool in a j iffy ; driving away with his pen, 
as if he were trying to overtake nine o’clock. 

“ Hallo ! ” growled Scrooge, in his accustomed voice as near 
as he CQuld feig^ it. What do you mean by coming here at 
this time of day ? ” 

“ I am very sorry, Sir,” said Bob. I am behind my time.” 

‘‘You are?” repeated Scrooge. “Yes. I think you are. 
Step this way. Sir, if you please.” 

“ It’s only once a year. Sir,” pleaded Bob, appearing from 
the Tank. “ It shall not be repeated. I was making rather 
merry yesterday. Sir.” 

“ Now, I’ll tell you what, my friend,” said Scrooge, “ I 
am not going to stand this sort of thing any longer. And 
therefore,” he continued, leaping from his stool, and giving 
Bob such a dig in the waistcoat that he staggered back into 
the Tank again : “ and therefore I am about to raise your 
salary ! ” 

Bob trembled, and got a little nearer to the ruler. He 


A CHRISTMAS CAROL 


78 

had a momentary idea of knocking Scrooge down with it; 
holding him; and calling to the people in the court for help 
and a strait-waistcoat. 

“ A Merry Christmas, Bob ! ” said Scrooge, with an earnest- 
ness that could not be mistaken, as he clapped him on the back. 
“ A merrier Christmas, Bob, my good fellow, than I have given 
you for many a year! I’ll raise your salary, and endeavour 
to assist your struggling family, and we will discuss your af- 
fairs this very afternoon, over a Christmas bowl of smoking 
bishop. Bob ! Make up the fires, and buy another coal-scuttle 
before you dot another i. Bob Cratchit ! ” 

Scrooge was better than his word. He did it all, and in- 
finitely more ; and to Tiny Tim, who did not die, he was a sec- 
ond father. He became as good a friend, as good a master, 
and as good a man, as the good old city knew, or any other 
good old city, town, or borough, in the good old world. Some 
people laughed to see the alteration in him, but he let them 
laugh, and little heeded them ; for he was wise enough to know 
that nothing ever happened on this globe, for good, at which 
some people did not have their fill of laughter in the outset; 
and knowing that such as these would be blind anyway, he 
thought it quite as well that they should wrinkle up their eyes 
in grins, as have the malady in less attractive forms. His 
own heart laughed: and that was quite enough for him. 

He had no further intercourse with Spirits, but lived upon 
the Total Abstinence Principle, ever afterwards; and it was 
always said of him, that he knew how to keep Christmas well, 
if any man alive possessed the knowledge. May that be truly 
said of us, and all of us ! And so, as Tiny Tim observed, God 
Bless Us, Every One! 


THE CHIMES 

A GOBLIN STORY 

OF 

SOME BELLS THAT RANG AN OLD YEAR OUT 
AND A NEW YEAR IN 


‘■y ■. :•■;:■•'' '\*\' •' •: v*' ■ ■ • ''• .- 

. ...A-.; ‘I- V. ., , I *’ ’ '• 

■ V.v.::.-,. .v'*' . 


• \ 


■ » 
V' 






THE CHIMES 


FIRST QUARTER 



HERE are not many people — and as it is desirable that 


X a story-teller and a story-reader should establish a mu- 
tual understanding as soon as possible, I beg it to be noticed 
that I confine this observation neither to young people nor 
to little people, but extend it to all conditions of people : little 
and big, young and old: yet growing up, or already growing 
down again — ^there are not, I say, many people who would care 
to sleep in a church. I don’t mean at sermon-time in warm 
weather (when the thing has actually been done, once or 
twice), but in the night and alone. A great multitude of per- 
sons will be violently astonished, I know, by this position, in 
the broad bold Day. But it applies to Night. It must be 
argued by night. And I will undertake to maintain it suc- 
cessfully on any gusty winter’s night appointed for the pur- 
pose, with any one opponent chosen from the rest, who will 
meet me singly in an old churchyard, before an old church 
door; and will previously empower me to lock him in, if 
needful to his satisfaction, until morning. 

For the night-wind has a dismal trick of wandering round 
and round a building of that sort, and moaning as it goes; 
and of trying, with its unseen hand, the windows and the 
doors ; and seeking out some crevices by which to enter. And 
when it has got in ; as one not finding what it seeks, whatever 
that may be ; it wails and howls to issue forth again : and not 
content with stalking through the aisles, and gliding round and 
round the pillars, and tempting the deep organ, soars up to the 
roof, and strives to rend the rafters : then flings itself despair- 
ingly upon the stones below, and passes, muttering, into the 
vaults. Anon, it comes up stealthily, and creeps along the 
walls : seeming to read, in whispers, the Inscriptions sacred to 


8i 


82 


THE CHIMES 


the Dead. At some of these, it breaks out shrilly, as with 
laughter ; and at others, moans and cries as if it were lamenting. 
It has a ghostly sound too, lingering within the altar ; where it 
seems to chant, in its wild way, of Wrong and Murder done, 
and false Gods worshipped; in defiance of the Tables of the 
Law, which look so fair and smooth, but are so flawed and 
broken. Ugh ! Heaven preserve us, sitting snugly round the 
fire. It has an awful voice, that wind at Midnight, singing 
in a church! 

But high up in the steeple 1 There the foul blast roars and 
whistles 1 High up in the steeple, where it is free to come and 
go through many an airy arch and loophole, and to twist 
and twine itself about the giddy stair, and twirl the groaning 
weathercock, and make the very tower shake and shiver! 
High up in the steeple, where the belfry is ; and iron rails are 
ragged with rust ; and sheets of lead and copper, shrivelled by 
the changing weather, crackle and heave beneath the unaccus- 
tomed tread; and birds stuff shabby nests into corners of old 
oaken joists and beams; and dust grows old and grey; and 
speckled spiders, indolent and fat with long security, swing idly 
to and fro in the vibration of the bells, and never loose their 
hold upon their threadspun castles in the air, or climb up sailor- 
like in quick alarm, or drop upon the ground and ply a score of 
nimble legs to save a life! High up in the steeple of an old 
church, far above the light and murmur of the town and far 
below the flying clouds that shadow it, is the wild and dreary 
place at night: and high up in the steeple of an old church, 
dwelt the Chimes I tell of. 

They were old Chimes, trust me. Centuries ago, these 
Bells had been baptised by bishops: so many centuries ago, 
that the register of their baptism was lost long, long before 
the memory of man : and no one knew their names. They had 
had their Godfathers and Godmothers, these Bells (for my own 
part, by the way, I would rather incur the responsibility of 
being Godfather to a Bell than a Boy) : and had their silver 
mugs no doubt, besides. But Time had mowed down their 
sponsors), and Henry the Eighth had melted down their mugs : 
and they now hung, nameless and mugless, in the church 
tower. 

Not speechless, though. Far from it. They had clear, loud. 


THE CHIMES 


83 

lusty, sounding voices, had these Bells ; and far and wide they 
might be heard upon the wind. Much too sturdy Chimes were 
they, to be dependent on the pleasure of the wind, moreover; 
for, fighting gallantly against it when it took an adverse whim, 
they would pour their cheerful notes into a listening ear right 
royally; and bent on being heard, on stormy nights, by some 
poor mother watching a sick child, or some lone wife whose 
husband was at sea, they had been sometimes known to beat 
a blustering Nor’-Wester; ay, “ all to fits,” as Toby Veck said; 
for though they chose to call him Trotty Veck, his name was 
Toby, and nobody could make it anything else either (except 
Tobias) without a special Act of Parliament; he having been 
as lawfully christened in his day as the Bells had been in 
theirs, though with not quite so much solemnity or public 
rejoicing. 

For my part, I confess myself of Toby Veck’s belief, for 
I am sure he had opportunities enough of forming a correct 
one. And whatever Toby Veck said, I say. And I take 
my stand by Toby Veck, although he did stand all day long 
(and weary work it was) just outside the church-door. In 
fact he was a ticket-porter, Toby Veck, and waited there for 
jobs. 

And a breezy, goose-skinned, blue-nosed, red-eyed, stony- 
toed, tooth-chattering place it was, to wait in, in the winter- 
time, as Toby Veck well knew. The wind came tearing round 
the corner — especially the east wind — as if it had sallied forth, 
express, from the confines of the earth, to have a blow at 
Toby. And oftentimes it seemed to come upon him sooner 
than it had expected, for bouncing round the corner, and 
passing Toby, it would suddenly wheel round again, as if it 
cried “ Why, here he is ! ” Incontinently his little apron would 
be caught up over his head like a naughty boy’s garments, and 
his feeble little cane would be seen to wrestle and struggle 
unavailingly in his hand, and his legs would undergo tre- 
mendous agitation, and Toby himself all aslant, and facing now 
in this direction, now in that, would be so banged and buffeted, 
and touzled, and worried, and hustled, and lifted off his feet, 
as to render it a state of things but one degree removed from 
a positive miracle, that he wasn’t carried up bodily into the 
air as a colony of frogs or snails or other very portable crea- 


THE CHIMES 


84 

tures sometimes are, and rained down again, to the great as- 
tonishment of the natives, on some strange comer of the world 
where ticket-porters are unknown. 

But, windy weather, in spite of its using him so roughly, 
was, after all, a sort of holiday for Toby. That’s the fact. 
He didn’t seem to wait so long for a sixpence in the wind, 
as at other times ; the having to fight with that boisterous ele- 
ment took off his attention, and quite freshened him up, when 
he was getting hungry and low-spirited. A hard frost too, 
or a fall of snow, was an Event ; and it seemed to do him good, 
somehow or other — it would have been hard to say in what 
respect though, Toby ! So wind and frost and snow, and per- 
haps a good stiff storm of hail, were Toby Veck’s red-letter 
days. 

Wet weather was the worst: the cold, damp, clammy wet, 
that wrapped him up like a moist great-coat : the only kind of 
great-coat Toby owned, or could have added to his comfort 
by dispensing with. Wet days, when the rain came slowly, 
thickly, obstinately down; when the street’s throat, like his 
own, was choked with mist; when smoking umbrellas passed 
and repassed, spinning round and round like so many teeto- 
tums, as they knocked against each other on the crowded foot- 
way, throwing off a little whirlpool of uncomfortable sprin- 
klings; when gutters brawled and waterspouts were full and 
noisy; when the wet from the projecting stones and ledges of 
the church fell drip, drip, drip, on Toby, making the wisp of 
straw on which he stood mere mud in no time ; those were the 
days that tried him. Then indeed, you might see Toby looking 
anxiously out from his shelter in an angle of the church wall 
— such a meagre shelter that in summer time it never cast a 
shadow thicker than a good-sized walking stick upon the sunny 
pavement — with a disconsolate and lengthened face. But 
coming out, a minute afterwards, to warm himself by exercise ; 
and trotting up and down some dozen times : he would brighten 
even then, and go back more brightly to his niche. 

They called him Trotty from his pace, which meant speed 
if it didn’t make it. He could have Walked faster perhaps; 
most likely; but rob him of his trot, and Toby would have 
taken to his bed and died. It bespattered him with mud in 
dirty weather; it cost him a world of trouble; he could have 


THE CHIMES 


85 

walked with infinitely greater ease ; but that was one reason for 
his clinging to it so tenaciously. A weak, small, spare old man, 
he was a very Hercules, this Toby, in his good intentions. He 
loved to earn his money. He delighted to believe — Toby was 
very poor, and couldn’t well afford to part with a delight — that 
he was worth his salt. With a shilling or an eighteen-penny 
message or small parcel in hand, his courage, always high, rose 
higher. As he trotted on, he would call out to fast Postmen 
ahead of him, to get out of the way ; devoutly believing that in 
the natural course of things he must inevitably overtake and 
run them down; and he had perfect faith — not often tested 
— in his being able to carry anything that man could lift. 

Thus, even when he came out of his nook to warm himself 
on a wet day, Toby trotted. Making, with his leaky shoes, a 
crooked line of slushy footprints in the mire ; and blowing on 
his chilly hands and rubbing them against each other, poorly 
defended from the searching cold by threadbare mufflers of 
grey worsted, with a private apartment only for the thumb, 
and a common room or tap for the rest of the fingers; Toby, 
with his knees bent and his cane beneath his arm, still trotted. 
Falling out into the road to look up at the belfry when the 
Chimes resounded, Toby trotted still. 

He made this last excursion several times a day, for they 
were company to him ; and when he heard their voices, he had 
an interest in glancing at their lodging-place, and thinking 
how they were moved, and what hammers beat upon them. 
Perhaps he was the more curious about these Bells, because 
there were points of resemblance between themselves and him. 
They hung there, in all weathers: with the wind and rain 
driving in upon them: facing only the outsides of all those 
houses; never getting any nearer to the blazing fires that 
gleamed and shone upon the windows, or came puffing out of 
the chimney tops ; and incapable of participation in any of 
the good things that were constantly being handed, through 
the street doors and the area railings, to prodigious cooks. 
Faces came and went at many windows: sometimes pretty 
faces, youthful faces, pleasant faces : sometimes the reverse : 
but Toby knew no more (though he often speculated on these 
trifles, standing idle in the streets) whence they came or 
where they went, or whether, when the lips move^ one kind 


86 THE CHIMES 

word was said of him in all the year, than did the Chimes 
themselves. 

Toby was not a casuist — that he knew of, at least — and I 
don’t mean to say that when he began to take to the Bells, and 
to knit up his first rough acquaintance with them into some- 
thing of a closer and more delicate woof, he passed through 
these considerations one by one, or held any formal review or 
great field-day in his thoughts. But what I mean to say, and 
do say is, that as the functions of Toby’s body, his digestive 
organs for example, did of their own cunning, and by a great 
many operations of which he was altogether ignorant, and the 
knowledge of which would have astonished him very much, 
arrive at a certain end; so his mental faculties, without his 
privity or concurrence, set all these wheels and springs in 
motion, with a thousand others, when they worked to bring 
about his liking for the Bells. 

And though I had said his love, I would not have recalled 
the word, though it would scarcely have expressed his com- 
plicated feeling. For, being but a simple man, he invested 
them with a strange and solemn character. They were so 
mysterious, often heard and never seen ; so high up, so far off, 
so full of such a deep strong melody, that he regarded them 
with a species of awe; and sometimes when he looked up at 
the dark arched windows in the town, he half expected to be 
beckoned to by something which was not a Bell, and yet was 
what he heard so often sounding in the Chimes. For all this, 
Toby scouted with indignation a certain flying rumour that 
the Chimes were haunted, as implying the possibility of their 
being connected with any Evil thing. In short, they were very 
often in his ears, and very often in his thoughts, but always 
in his good opinion; and he very often got such a crick in 
his neck by staring with his mouth open, at the steeple where 
they hung, that he was fain to take an extra trot or two, after- 
wards, to cure it. 

The very thing he was in the act of doing one cold day, 
when the last drowsy sound of Twelve o’clock, just struck, 
was humming like a melodious monster of a Bee, and not by 
any means a busy Bee, all through the steeple ! 

‘‘ Dinner-time, eh ! ” said Toby, trotting up and down before 
the church. “Ah!” 


THE CHIMES 


87 

Toby’s nose was very red, and his eyelids were very red, 
and he winked very much, and his shoulders were very near 
his ears, and his legs were very stiff ; and altogether he was 
evidently a long way upon the frosty side of cool. 

“ Dinner-time, eh ! ” repeated Toby, using his right-hand 
muffler like an infantine boxing-glove, and punishing his chest 
for being cold. “ Ah-h-h-h ! ” 

He took a silent trot, after that, for a minute or two. 

“ There’s nothing,” said Toby, breaking forth afresh, — 
but here he stopped short in his trot, and with a face of 
great interest and some alarm, felt his nose carefully all the 
way up. It was but a little way (not being much of a nose) 
and he had soon finished. 

“ I thought it was gone,” said Toby, trotting off again. 

It’s all right, however. I am sure I couldn’t blame it if 
it was to go. It has a precious hard service of it in the bitter 
weather, and precious little to look forward to: for I don’t 
take snuff myself. It’s a good deal tried, poor creetur, at 
the best of times ; for when it does get hold of a pleasant whiff 
or so (which an’t too often), it’s generally from somebody 
else’s dinner, a-coming home from the baker’s.” 

The reflection reminded him of that other reflection, which 
he had left unfinished. 

“ There’s nothing,” said Toby, more regular in its coming 
round than dinner-time, and nothing less regular in its coming 
round than dinner. That’s the great difference between ’em. 
It’s took me a long time to find it out. I wonder whether 
it would be worth any gentleman’s while, now, to buy that 
obserwation for the Papers ; or the Parliament ! ” 

Toby was only joking, for he gravely shook his head in 
self-depreciation. 

Why ! Lord ! ” said Toby. The Papers is full of ob- 
serwations as it is ; and so’s the Parliament. Here’s last 
week’s paper, now taking a very dirty one from his pocket, 
and holding it from him at arm’s length ; ‘‘ full of obserwa- 
tions! Full of obserwations ! I like to know the news as 
well as any man,” said Toby, slowly; folding it a little smaller, 
and putting it in his pocket again : “ but it almost goes against 
the grain with me to read a paper now. It frightens me al- 
most. I don’t know what we poor people are coming to. 


88 THE CHIMES 

Lord send we may be coming to something better in the New 
Year nigh upon us! ” 

“ Why, father, father I ” said a pleasant voice, hard by. 

But Toby, not hearing it, continued to trot backwards and 
forwards : musing as he went, and talking to himself. 

“ It seems as if we can’t go right, or do right, or be righted,” 
said Toby. “ I hadn’t much schooling, myself, when I was 
young ; and I can’t make out whether we have any business on 
the face of the earth, or not. Sometimes I think we must 
have a little ; and sometimes I think we must be intruding. I 
get so puzzled sometimes that I am not even able to make up 
my mind whether there is any good at all in us, or whether 
we are born bad. We seem to be dreadful things; we seem 
to give a deal of trouble; we are always being complained 
of and guarded against. One way or other, we fill the 
papers. Talk of a New Year!” said Toby, mournfully. “I 
can bear up as well as another man at most times; better 
than a good many, for I am as strong as a lion, and all men 
an’t ; but supposing it should really be that we have 
no right to a New Year — supposing we really are intrud- 
ing— ” 

“ Why, father, father ! ” said the pleasant voice again. 

Toby heard it this time; started; stopped; and shortening 
his sight, which had been directed a long way off as seeking 
for enlightenment in the very heart of the approaching year, 
found himself face to face with his own child, and looking 
close into her eyes. 

Bright eyes they were. Eyes that would bear a world of 
looking in, before their depth was fathomed. Dark eyes, that 
reflected back the eyes which searched them; not flashingly, 
or at the owner’s will, but with a clear, calm, honest, patient 
radiance, claiming kindred with that light which Heaven 
called into being. Eyes that were beautiful and true, and 
beaming with Hope. With Hope so young and fresh; with 
Hope so buoyant, vigorous, and bright, despite the twenty 
years of work and poverty on which they had looked ; that they 
became a voice to Trotty Veck, and said: I think we have 

some business here — a little ! ” 

Trotty kissed the lips belonging to the eyes, and squeezed 
the blooming face between his hands. 


THE CHIMES 89 

Why, Pet,” said Trotty. ‘‘ What’s to do? I didn’t expect 
you to-day, Meg.” 

Neither did I expect to come, father,” cried the girl, nod- 
ding her head and smiling as she spoke. But here I am ! 
And not alone ; not alone ! ” 

Why you don’t mean to say,” observed Trotty, looking cu- 
riously at a covered basket which she carried in her hand, 
“ that you — ” 

“ Smell it, father dear,” said Meg. “ Only smell it ! ” 

Trotty was going to lift up the cover at once, in a great 
hurry, when she gaily interposed her hand. 

No, no, no,” said Meg, with the glee of a child. 

Lengthen it out a little. Let me just lift up the corner; just 
the lit-tle ti-ny cor-ner, you know,” said Meg, suiting the ac- 
tion to the word with the utmost gentleness, and speaking very 
softly, as if she were afraid of being overheard by something 
inside the basket; ''there. Now. What’s that?” 

Toby took the shortest possible sniff at the edge of the 
basket, and cried out in a rapture: 

"Why, it’s hot!” 

" It’s burning hot ! ” cried Meg. " Ha, ha, ha ! It’s scald- 
ing hot ! ” 

"Ha, ha, j?a!” roared Toby, with a sort of kick. "It’s 
scalding hot!” 

"But what is it, father?” said Meg. "Come! You 
haven’t guessed what it is. And you must guess what it is. 
I can’t think of taking it out, till you guess what it is. Don’t 
be in such a hurry ! Wait a minute ! A little bit more of the 
cover. Now guess!” 

Meg was in a perfect fright lest he should guess right too 
soon; shrinking away, as she held the basket towards him; 
curling up her pretty shoulders; stopping her ear with her 
hand, as if by so doing she could keep the right word out of 
Toby’s lips ; and laughing softly the whole time. 

Meanwhile Toby, putting a hand on each knee, bent down 
his nose to the basket, and took a long inspiration at the lid; 
the grin upon his withered face expanding in the process, as if 
he were inhaling laughing gas. 

" Ah ! It’s very nice,” said Toby. " It an’t — I suppose 
it an’t Polonies ? ” 


90 THE CHIMES 

‘‘No, no, no!’' cried Meg, delighted. Nothing like Pol- 
onies ! ” 

“ No,” said Toby, after another sniff. It’s — it’s mellower 
than Polonies. It’s very nice. It improves every moment. 
It’s too decided for Trotters. An’t it?” 

Meg was in an ecstasy. He could not have gone wider of 
the mark than Trotters — except Polonies. 

“Liver?” said Toby, communing with himself. “No. 
There’s a mildness about it that don’t answer to liver. Pet- 
titoes? No. It an’t faint enough for pettitoes. It wants the 
stringiness of Cocks’ heads. And I know it an’t sausages. 
I’ll tell you what it is. It’s chitterlings ! ” 

“No, it an’t!” cried Meg, in a burst of delight. “No, it 
an’t!” 

“Why, what am I a-thinking of! ” said Toby, suddenly re- 
covering a position as near the perpendicular as it was possible 
for him to assume. “ I shall forget my own name next. 
It’s tripe ! ” 

Tripe it was ; and Meg, in high joy, protested he should say, 
in half a minute more, it was the best tripe ever stewed. 

“ And so,” said Meg, busying herself exultantly with the 
basket, “ I’ll lay the cloth at once, father ; for I have brought 
the tripe in a basin and tied the basin up in a pocket-handker- 
chief ; and if I like to be proud for once, and spread that for 
a cloth, and call it a cloth, there’s no law to prevent me; is 
there, father?” 

“ Not that I know of, my dear,” said Toby. “ But they’re 
always a-bringing up some new law or other.” 

“ And according to what I was reading you in the paper 
the other day, father; what the Judge said, you know; we 
poor people are supposed to know them all. Ha, ha! What 
a mistake ! My goodness me, how clever they think us ! ” 

“Yes, my dear,” cried Trotty; “and they’d be very fond 
of any one of us that did know ’em all. He’d grow fat upon 
the work he’d get, that man, and be popular with the gentle- 
folks in his neighbourhood. Very much so ! ” 

“ He’d eat his dinner with an appetite, whoever he was, if 
it smelt like this,” said Meg, cheerfully. “ Make haste, for 
there’s a hot potato beside, and half a pint of fresh-drawn beer 
in a bottle. Where will you dine, father? On the Post, or 


THE CHIMES 


91 

on the Steps? Dear, dear, how grand we are. Two places 
to choose from ! ’’ 

“ The Steps to-day, my Pet,’' said Trotty. “ Steps in dry 
weather. Posts in wet. There’s a greater conveniency in 
the Steps at all times, because of the sitting down ; but they’re 
rheumatic in the damp.” 

Then here,” said Meg, clapping her hands, after a 
moment’s bustle ; “ here it is, all ready ! And beautiful it 
looks ! Come, father. Come ! ” 

Since his discovery of the contents of the basket, Trotty 
had been standing looking at her — and had been speaking too 
— in an abstracted manner, which showed that though she was 
the object of his thoughts and eyes, to the exclusion even of 
tripe, he neither saw nor thought about her as she was at that 
moment, but had before him some imaginary rough sketch or 
drama of her future life. Roused, now, by her cheerful sum- 
mons, he shook off a melancholy shake of the head which was 
just coming upon him, and trotted to her side. As he was 
stooping to sit down, the Chimes rang. 

Amen ! ” said Trotty, pulling off his hat and looking up 
towards them. 

“Amen to the Bells, father?” cried Meg. 

“ They broke in like a grace, my dear,” said Trotty, taking 
his seat. “ They’d say a good one, I am sure, if they could. 
Many’s the kind thing they say to me.” 

“ The Bells do, father ! ” laughed Meg, as she set the basin, 
and a knife and fork, before him. “ Well ! ” 

“ Seem to, my Pet,” said Trotty, falling to with great vigour. 
“And where’s the difference? If I hear ’em, what does it 
matter whether they speak it or not? Why bless you, my 
dear,” said Toby, pointing at the tower with his fork, and be- 
coming more animated under the influence of dinner, “ how 
often have I heard them bells say, ‘ Toby Veck, Toby Veck, 
keep a good heart, Toby! Toby Veck, Toby Veck, keep a 
good heart, Toby!’ A million times? More!” 

“ Well, I never ! ” cried Meg. 

She had, though — over and over again. For it was Toby’s 
constant topic. 

“ When things is very bad,” said Trotty; “ very bad indeed, 
I mean; almost at the worst; then it’s ‘Toby Veck, Toby 


THE CHIMES 


92 

Veck, job' coming soon, Toby! Toby Veck, Toby Veck, job 
coming soon, Toby!’ That way.” 

“ And it comes — ^^at last, father,” said Meg, with a touch 
of sadness in her pleasant voice. 

‘‘ Always,” answered the unconscious Toby. ‘‘ Never fails.” 

While this discourse was holding, Trotty made no pause 
in his attack upon the savoury meat before him, but cut and 
ate, and cut and drank, and cut and chewed, and dodged 
about, from tripe to hot potato, and from hot potato back 
again to tripe, with an unctuous and unflagging relish. But 
happening now to look all round the street — in case anybody 
should be beckoning from any door or window, for a porter — 
his eyes, in coming back again, encountered Meg: sitting op- 
posite to him, with her arms folded : and only busy in watching 
his progress with a smile of happiness. 

“Why, Lord forgive me!” said Trotty, dropping his knife 
and fork. “ My dove ! Meg ! why didn’t you tell me what a 
beast I was ? ” 

“ Father?” 

“ Sitting here,” said Trotty, in penitent explanation, “ cram- 
ming, and stuffing, and gorging myself; and you before me 
there, never so much as breaking your precious fast, nor 
wanting to, when — ” 

“ But I have broken it, father,” interposed his daughter, 
laughing, “ all to bits. I have had my dinner.” 

“Nonsense,” said Trotty. “Two dinners in one day! It 
an’t possible ! You might as well tell me that two New Year’s 
Days will come together, or that I have had a gold head all my 
life, and never changed it.” 

“ I have had my dinner, father, for all that,” said Meg, com- 
ing nearer to him. “ And if you’ll go on with yours, I’ll tell 
you how and where ; and how your dinner came to be brought ; 
and — and something else besides.” 

Toby still appeared incredulous; but she looked into his 
face with her clear eyes, and laying her hand upon his shoul- 
der, motioned him to go on while the meat was hot. So 
Trotty took up his knife and fork again, and went to work. 
But much more slowly than before, and shaking his head, as if 
he were not at all pleased with himself. 

“ I had my dinner, father,” said Meg, after a little hesita- 


THE CHIMES 93 

tion, “ with — with Richard. His dinner-time was early ; and as 
he brought his dinner with him when he came to see me, we — 
we had it together, father.” 

Trotty took a little beer, and smacked his lips. Then he 
said “ Oh ! ” — because she waited. 

“ And Richard says, father — ” Meg resumed. Then 
stopped. 

‘'What does Richard say, Meg?” asked Toby. 

“ Richard says, father — ” Another stoppage. 

“ Richard’s a long time saying it,” said Toby. 

“ He says then, father,” Meg continued, lifting up her eyes 
at last, and speaking in a tremble, but quite plainly ; “ another 
year is nearly gone, and where is the use of waiting on from 
year to year, when it is so unlikely we shall ever be better off 
than we are now? He says we are poor now, father, and 
we shall be poor then; but we are young now, and years will 
make us old before we know it. He says that if we wait : peo- 
ple in our condition: until we see our way quite clearly, the 
way will be a narrow one indeed — :the common way — ^the 
Grave, father.” 

A bolder man than Trotty Veck must needs have drawn upon 
his boldness largely, to deny it. Trotty held his peace. 

“ And how hard, father, to grow old, and die, and think we 
might have cheered and helped each other ! How hard in all 
our lives to love each other ; and to grieve, apart, to see each 
other, working, changing, growing old and grey. Even if I 
got the better of it, and forgot him (which I never could), 
oh, father dear, how hard to have a heart so full as mine is 
now, and live to have it slowly drained out every drop, without 
the recollection of one happy moment of a woman’s life, to 
stay behind and comfort me and make me better ! ” 

Trotty sat quite still. Meg dried her eyes, and said more 
gaily: that is to say, with here a laugh, and there a sob, and 
here a laugh and sob together: 

“ So Richard says, father ; as his work was yesterday made 
certain for some time to come, and as I love him and have 
loved him full three years — ah ! longer than that, if he knew it ! 
— will I marry him on New Year’s Day; the best and happiest 
day, he says, in the whole year, and one that is almost sure to 
bring good fortune with it. It’s a short notice, father — isn’t 


THE CHIMES 


94 

it? — but I haven’t my fortune to be settled, or my wedding 
dresses to be made, like the great ladies, father — have I? 
And he said so much, and said it in this way ; so strong and 
earnest, and all the time so kind and gentle; that I said I’d 
come and talk to you, father. And as they paid the money 
for that work of mine this morning (unexpectedly, I am 
sure!), and as you have fared very poorly for a whole week, 
and as I couldn’t help wishing there should be something to 
make this day a sort of holiday to you as well as a dear and 
happy day to me, father, I made a little treat and brought it 
to surprise you.” 

“ And see how he leaves it cooling on the step ! ” said an- 
other voice. 

It was the voice of this same Richard, who had come upon 
them unobserved, and stood before the father and daughter: 
looking down upon them with a face as glowing as the iron 
on which his stout sledge-hammer daily rung. A handsome, 
well-made, powerful youngster he was; with eyes that spark- 
led like the red-hot droppings from a furnace fire; black 
hair that curled about his swarthy temples rarely; and a 
smile — a smile that bore out Meg’s eulogium on his style of 
conversation. 

‘‘ See how he leaves it cooling on the step ! ” said Richard. 
** Meg don’t know what he likes. Not she! ” 

Trotty, all action and enthusiasm, immediately reached up 
his hand to Richard, and was going to address him in a great 
hurry, when the house-door opened without any warning, and 
a footman very nearly put his foot in the tripe. 

** Out of the vays here, will you ! You must always go and 
be a-settin’ on our steps, must you! You can’t go and give 
a turn to none of the neighbours never, can’t you ! Will you 
clear the road, or won’t you ? ” 

Strictly speaking, the last question was irrelevant, as they 
had already done it. 

“ What’s the matter, what’s the matter ! ” said the gentle- 
man for whom the door was opened : coming out of the house 
at that kind of light-heavy pace — that peculiar compromise 
between a walk and a jog-trot — with which a gentleman upon 
the smooth down-hill of life, wearing creaking boots, a watch- 
chain, and clean linen, may come out of his house: not only 


THE CHIMES 


95 

without any abatement of his dignity, but with an expression 
of having important and wealthy engagements elsewhere. 
'' What’s the matter. What’s the matter ! ” 

You’re always a-being begged, and prayed, upon your 
bended knees you are,” said the footman with great emphasis 
to Trotty Veck, to let our door-steps be. Why don’t you let 
’em be ? Can’t you let ’em be ? ” 

“ There. That’ll do, that’ll do ! ” said the gentleman. 

Hallo there! Porter!” beckoning with his hand to Trotty 
Veck. “ Come here. What’s that? Your dinner?” 

“ Yes, Sir,” said Trotty, leaving it behind him in a corner. 

“ Don’t leave it there,” exclaimed the gentleman. “ Bring 
it here, bring it here. So ! This is your dinner, is it ? ” 

“ Yes, Sir,” repeated Trotty, looking with a fixed eye and 
a watery mouth, at the piece of tripe he had reserved for a 
last delicious tidbit; which the gentleman was now turning 
over and over on the end of the fork. 

Two other gentlemen had come out with him. One was a 
low-spirited gentleman of middle age, of a meagre habit, and 
a disconsolate face; who kept his hands continually in the 
pockets of his scanty pepper-and-salt trousers, very large and 
dog’s-eared from that custom; and was not particularly well 
brushed or washed. The other, a full-sized, sleek, well-con- 
ditioned gentleman, in a blue coat with bright buttons, and a 
white cravat. This gentleman had a very red face, as if an 
undue proportion of the blood in his body were squeezed up 
into his head ; which perhaps accounted for his having also the 
appearance of being rather cold about the heart. 

He who had Toby’s meat upon the fork, called to the first 
one by the name of Filer; and they both drew near together. 
Mr. Filer being exceedingly short-sighted, was obliged to go 
so close to the remnant of Toby’s dinner before he could make 
out what it was, that Toby’s heart leaped up into his mouth. 
But Mr. Filer didn’t eat it. 

“ This is a description of animal food, Alderman,” said Filer, 
making little punches in it, with a pencil-case, commonly 
known to the labouring population of this country, by the name 
of tripe.” 

The Alderman laughed, and winked; for he was a merry 
fellow, Alderman Cute. Oh, and a sly fellow too ! A know- 


THE CHIMES 


96 

ing fellow. Up to everything. Not to be imposed upon. 
Deep in the people’s hearts! He knew them, Cute did. I 
believe you! 

“But who eats tripe?” said Mr. Filer, looking round. 
“ Tripe is without an exception the least economical, and the 
most wasteful article of consumption that the markets of this 
country can by possibility produce. The loss upon a pound of 
tripe has been found to be, in the boiling, seven-eighths of a 
fifth more than the loss upon a pound of any other animal 
substance whatever. Tripe is more expensive, properly under- 
stood, than the hothouse pineapple. Taking into account the 
number of animals slaughtered yearly within the bills of mor- 
tality alone; and forming a low estimate of the quantity of 
tripe which the carcases of those animals, reasonably well 
butchered, would yield ; I find that the waste on that amount of 
tripe, if boiled, would victual a garrison of five hundred men 
for five months of thirty-one days each, and a February over. 
The Waste, the Waste! ” 

Trotty stood aghast, and his legs shook under him. He 
seemed to have starved a garrison of five hundred men with 
his own hand. 

“Who eats tripe?” said Mr. Filer, warmly. “Who eats 
tripe? ” 

Trotty made a miserable bow. 

“You do, do you?” said Mr. Filer. “Then I’ll tell you 
something. You snatch your tripe, my friend, out of the 
mouths of widows and orphans.” 

“ I hope not. Sir,” said Trotty, faintly. “ I’d sooner die 
of want ! ” 

“ Divide the amount of tripe before mentioned, Alderman,” 
said Mr. Filer, “ by the estimated number of existing widows 
and orphans, and the result will be one penny-weight of tripe 
to each. Not a grain is left for that man. Consequently, he’s 
a robber.” 

Trotty was so shocked, that it gave him no concern to see 
the Alderman finish the tripe himself. It was a relief to get 
rid of it, anyhow. 

“And what do you say?” asked the Alderman, jocosely, 
of the red-faced gentleman in the blue coat. “ You have 
heard friend Filer. What do you say?” 


THE CHIMES 


97 

What’s it possible to say ? ” returned the gentleman. 

What is to be said ? Who can take any interest in a fellow 
like this,” meaning Trotty ; “ in such degenerate times as these? 
Look at him! What an object! The good old times, the 
grand old times, the great old times! Those were the times 
for a bold peasantry, and all that sort of thing. Those were 
the times for every sort of thing, in fact. There’s nothing 
now-a-days. Ah ! ” sighed the red-faced gentleman. “ The 
good old times, the good old times ! ” 

The gentleman didn’t specify what particular times he al- 
luded to ; nor did he say whether he objected to the present 
times, from a disinterested consciousness that they had done 
nothing very remarkable in producing himself. 

The good old times, the good old times,” repeated the 
gentleman. What times they were ! They were the only 
times. It’s of no use talking about any other times, or dis- 
cussing what the people are in these times. You don’t call 
these, times, do you? I don’t. Look into Strutt’s Costumes, 
and see what a Porter used to be, in any of the good old 
English reigns.” 

He hadn’t, in his very best circumstances, a shirt to his 
back, or a stocking to his foot, and there was scarcely a vege- 
table in all England for him to put into his mouth,” said Mr. 
Filer. “ I can prove it, by tables.” 

But still the red-faced gentleman extolled the good old 
times, the grand old times, the great old times. No matter 
what anybody else said, he still went turning round and round 
in one set form of words concerning them ; as a poor squirrel 
turns and turns in its revolving cage ; touching the mechanism, 
and trick of which, it has probably quite as distinct perceptions, 
as ever this red-faced gentleman had of his deceased Millen- 
nium. 

It is possible that poor old Trotty ’s faith in these very 
vague Old Times was not entirely destroyed, for he felt 
vague enough, at that moment. One thing, however, was 
plain to him, in the midst of his distress; to wit, that how- 
ever these gentlemen might differ in details, his misgivings of 
that morning, and of many other mornings, were well 
founded. 

“ No, no. We can’t go right or do right,” thought Trotty 


98 THE CHIMES 

in despair. “ There is no good in us. We are born 
bad!’^ 

But Trotty had a father’s heart within him; which had 
somehow got into his breast in spite of this decree ; and he 
could not bear that Meg, in the blush of her brief joy, should 
have her fortune read by these wise gentlemen. ‘‘ God 
help her,” thought poor Trotty. ‘‘ She will know it soon 
enough.” 

He anxiously signed, therefore, to the young smith, to take 
her away. But he was so busy, talking to her softly at a 
little distance, that he only became conscious of this desire, 
simultaneously with Alderman Cute. Now, the Alderman had 
not yet had his say, but he was a philosopher, too — practical, 
though ! Oh, very practical ! — and as he had no idea of losing 
any portion of his audience, he cried “ Stop ! ” 

Now, you know,” said the Alderman, addressing his two 
friends, with a self-complacent smile upon his face which was 
habitual to him, “ I am a plain man, and a practical man ; and 
I go to work in a plain practical way. That’s my way. There 
is not the least mystery or difficulty in dealing with this sort 
of people if you only understand ’em, and can talk to ’em in 
their own manner. Now, you Porter ! Don’t you ever tell me, 
or anybody else, my friend, that you haven’t always enough to 
eat, and of the best; because I know better. I have tasted 
your tripe, you know, and you can’t ‘ chaff ’ me. You under- 
stand what ‘ chaff ’ means, eh ? That’s the right word, isn’t it ? 
Ha, ha, ha! Lord bless you,” said the Alderman, turning to 
his friends again, “ it’s the easiest thing on earth to deal with 
this sort of people, if you understand ’em.” 

Famous man for the common people, Alderman Cute! 
Never out of temper with them ! Easy, affable, joking, know- 
ing gentleman! 

“ You see, my friend,” pursued the Alderman, “ there’s a 
great deal of nonsense talked about Want — ‘ hard up,’ you 
know: that’s the phrase, isn’t it? ha! ha! ha! — and I intend 
to Put it Down. There’s a certain amount of cant in vogue 
about Starvation, and I mean to Put it Down! That’s all! 
Lord bless you,” said the Alderman, turning to his friends 
again, “you may Put Down anything among this sort of 
people, if you only know the way to set about it ! ” 


THE CHIMES 


99 

Trotty took Meg’s hand and drew it through his arm. He 
didn’t seem to know what he was doing though. 

“Your daughter, eh?” said the Alderman, chucking her 
familiarly under the chin. 

Always affable with the working classes, Alderman Cute! 
Knew what pleased them! Not a bit of pride! 

“ Where’s her mother ? ” asked that worthy gentleman. 

“ Dead,” said Toby. “ Her mother got up linen ; and was 
called to Heaven when She was bom.” 

“ Not to get up linen there, I suppose,” remarked the Aider- 
man pleasantly. 

Toby might or might not have been able to separate his wife 
in Heaven from her old pursuits. But query : If Mrs. Aider- 
man Cute had gone to Heaven, would Mr. Alderman Cute 
have pictured her as holding any state or station there? 

“ And you’re making love to her, are you ? ” said Cute to 
the young smith. 

“ Yes,” returned Richard quickly, for he was nettled by 
the question. “ And we are to be married on New Year’s 
Day.” 

“ What do you mean ! ” cried Filer sharply. “ Married ! ” 

“ Why, yes, we’re thinking of it. Master,” said Richard. 
“ We’re rather in a hurry, you see, in case it should be Put 
Down first.” 

“ Ah ! ” cried Filer, with a groan. “ Put that down indeed, 
Alderman, and you’ll do something. Married ! Married ! 
The ignorance of the first principles of political economy on 
the part of these people ; their improvidence ; their wickedness ; 
is, by Heavens! enough to — Now look at that couple, will 
you ! ” 

Well ! They were worth looking at. And marriage seemed 
as reasonable and fair a deed as they need have in contem- 
plation. 

“ A man may live to be as old as Methuselah,” said Mr. 
Filer, “ and may labour all his life for the benefit of such 
people as those; and may heap up facts on figures, facts on 
figures, facts on figures, mountains high and dry ; and he can 
no more hope to persuade ’em that they have no right or 
business to be married, than he can hope to persuade ’em 
that they have no earthly right or business to be born. And 


100 THE CHIMES 

that we know they haven’t. We reduced it to a mathematical 
certainty long ago.” 

Alderman Cute was mightily diverted, and laid his right 
fore-finger on the side of his nose, as much as to say to both 
his friends, “ Observe me, will you ! Keep your eye on the 
practical man ! ” — and called Meg to him.. 

“ Come here, my girl ! ” said Alderman Cute. 

The young blood of her lover had been mounting, wrathfully, 
within the last few minutes ; and he was indisposed to let her 
come. But, setting a constraint upon himself, he came for- 
ward with a stride as Meg approached, and stood beside her. 
Trotty kept her hand within his arm still, but looked from 
face to face as wildly as a sleeper in a dream. 

“ Now, I’m going to give you a word or two of good advice, 
my girl,” said the Alderman, in his nice easy way. “ It’s my 
place to give advice, you know, because I’m a Justice. You 
know I’m a Justice, don’t you?” 

Meg timidly said, “ Yes.” But everybody knew Alderman 
Cute was a Justice! Oh, dear, so active a Justice always! 
Who such a mote of brightness in the public eye, as Cute ! 

“ You are going to be married, you say,” pursued the 
Alderman. “ Very unbecoming and indelicate in one of your 
sex! But never mind that. After you are married, you’ll 
quarrel with your husband, and come to be a distressed wife. 
You may think not : but you will, because I tell you so. Now 
I give you fair warning, that I have made up my mind to 
Put distressed wives Down. So, don’t be brought before me. 
You’ll have children — boys. Those boys will grow up bad of 
course, and run wild in the streets, without shoes and stock- 
ings. Mind, my young friend! I’ll convict ’em summarily, 
every one, for I am determined to Put boys without shoes 
and stockings, Down. Perhaps your husband will die young 
(most likely) and leave you with a baby. Then you’ll be 
turned out of doors, and wander up and down the streets. 
Now, don’t wander near me, my dear, for I am resolved to 
Put all wandering mothers Down. All young mothers, of all 
sorts and kinds, it’s my determination to Put Down. Don’t 
think to plead illness as an excuse with me; or babies as an 
excuse with me; for all sick persons and young children (I 
hope you know the Church Service, but I’m afraid not) I am 



“ ‘IT’S I. YOUR UNCLE SCROOGE. I HAVE COME TO DINNER’ ” 

— Page 77 



©CLK 64249 


THE CHIMES 


lOl 


determined to Put Down. And if you attempt, desperately, 
and ungratefully, and impiously, and fraudulently attempt, to 
drown yourself, or hang yourself, I’ll have no pity on you, 
for I have made up my mind to Put all suicide Down. If 
there is one thing,” said the Alderman, with his self-satisfied 
smile, '' on which I can be said to have made up my mind more 
than on another, it is to Put suicide Down. So don’t try it on. 
That’s the phase, isn’t it! Ha, ha! now we understand each 
other.” 

Toby knew not whether to be agonised or glad to see that 
Meg had turned a deadly white, and dropped her lover’s hand. 

“ As for you, you dull dog,” said the Alderman, turning with 
even increased cheerfulness and urbanity to the young smith, 
“ what are you thinking of being married for ? What do 
you want to be married for, you silly fellow! If I was a 
fine, young, strapping chap like you, I should be ashamed of 
being milksop enough to pin myself to a woman’s apron- 
strings ! Why, she’ll be an old woman before you’re a middle- 
aged man ! And a pretty figure you’ll cut then, with a draggle- 
tailed wife and a crowd of squalling children crying after you 
wherever you go ! ” 

Oh, he knew how to banter the common people, Alderman 
Cute ! 

“ There ! Go along with you,” said the Alderman, and 
repent. Don’t make such a fool of yourself as to get married 
on New Year’s Day. You’ll think very differently of it long 
before next New Year’s Day ; a trim young fellow like you, 
with all the girls looking after you. There! Go along with 
you ! ” They went along. Not arm in arm, or hand in hand, 
or interchanging bright glances: but she in tears, he gloomy 
and down-looking. Were these the hearts that had so lately 
made old Toby’s leap up from its faintness? No, no. The 
Alderman (a blessing on his head!) had Put them Down. 

“ As you happen to be here,” said the Alderman to Toby, 
‘‘ you shall carry a letter for me. Can you be quick? You’re 
an old man.” 

Toby, who had been looking after Meg, quite stupidly, made 
shift to murmur out that he was very quick, and very strong. 

‘'How old are you?” inquired the Alderman. 

“ I’m over sixty, Sir,” said Toby. 


102 


THE CHIMES 


“ Oh ! This man’s a great deal past the average age, you 
know,” cried Mr. Filer, breaking in as if his patience would 
bear some trying, but this really was carrying matters a little 
too far. 

'' I feel I’m intruding. Sir,” said Toby. I — I misdoubted 

it this morning. Oh, dear me ! ” 

The Alderman cut him short by giving him the letter from 
his pocket. Toby would have got a shilling too; but Mr. Filer 
clearly showing that in that case he would rob a certain given 
number of persons of ninepence-half penny a-piece, he only got 
sixpence ; and thought himself very well off to get that. 

Then the Alderman gave an arm to each of his friends, and 
walked off in high feather ; but he immediately came hurrying 
back alone, as if he had forgotten something. 

Porter ! ” said the Alderman. 

Sir!” said Toby. 

‘‘Take care of that daughter of yours. She’s much too 
handsome.” 

“ Even her good looks are stolen from somebody or other 
I suppose,” thought Toby, looking at the sixpence in his hand, 
and thinking of the tripe. “ She’s been and robbed five hun- 
dred ladies of a bloom a-piece, I shouldn’t wonder. It’s very 
dreadful ! ” 

“ She’s much too handsome, my man,” repeated the Aider- 
man. “ The chances are, that she’ll come to no good, I clearly 
see. Observe what I say. Take care of her! ” With which, 
he hurried off again. 

“Wrong every way. Wrong every way!” said Trotty, 
clasping his hands. “ Born bad. No business here ! ” 

The Chimes came clashing in upon him as he said the words. 
Full, loud, and sounding — but with no encouragement. No, 
not a drop. 

“The tune’s changed,” cried the old man, as he listened. 
“ There’s not a word of all that fancy in it. Why should there 
be? I have no business with the New Year nor with the old 
one neither. Let me die ! ” 

Still the Bells, pealing forth their changes, made the very 
air spin. “ Put ’em down. Put ’em down ! Good old Times, 
Good old Times! Facts and Figures, Facts and Figures! 


THE CHIMES 


103 


Put ’em down, Put ’em down ! ” If they said anything they 
said this, till the brain of Toby reeled. 

He pressed his bewildered head between his hands, as if to 
keep it from splitting asunder. A well-timed action, as it 
happened; for finding the letter in one of them, and being by 
that means reminded of his charge, he fell, mechanically, into 
his usual trot, and trotted off. 


SECOND QUARTER 


HE letter Toby had received from Alderman Cute, was 



1 addressed to a great man in the great district of the 
town. The greatest district of the town. It must have been 
the greatest district of the town, because it was commonly 
called The World by its inhabitants. 

The letter positively seemed heavier in Toby’s hand, than 
another letter. Not because the Alderman had sealed it with 
a very large coat of arms and no end of wax, but because of 
the weighty name on the superscription, and the ponderous 
amount of gold and silver with which it was associated. 

How different from us!” thought Toby, in all simplicity 
and earnestness, as he looked at the direction. “ Divide the 
lively turtles in the bills of mortality, by the number of gentle- 
folks able to buy ’em; and whose share does he take but his 
own! As to snatching tripe from anybody’s mouth — he’d 
scorn it ! ” 

With the involuntary homage due to such an exalted char- 
acter, Toby interposed a corner of his apron between the letter 
and his fingers. 

‘‘ His children,” said Trotty, and a mist rose before his eyes ; 
** his daughters — Gentlemen may win their hearts and marry 
them; they may be happy wives and mothers; they may be 
handsome like my darling M — e — ” 

He couldn’t finish the name. The final letter swelled in his 
throat, to the size of the whole alphabet. 

'' Never mind,” thought Trotty. I know what I mean. 
That’s more than enough for me.” And with this consolatory 
rumination^ trotted on. 


THE CHIMES 


104 

It was a hard frost, that day. The air was bracing, crisp, 
and clear. The wintry sun, though powerless for warmth, 
looked brightly down upon the ice it was too weak to melt, 
and set a radiant glory there. At other times, Trotty might 
have learned a poor man’s lesson from the wintry sun ; but he 
was past that now. 

The Year was Old that day. The patient Year had lived 
through the reproaches and misuses of its slanderers, and 
faithfully performed its work. Spring, summer, autumn, win- 
ter. It had laboured through the destined round, and now 
laid down its weary head to die. Shut out from hope, high 
impulse, active happiness, itself, but active messenger of many 
joys of others, it made appeal in its decline to have its toiling 
days and patient hours remembered, and to die in peace. 
Trotty might have read a poor man’s allegory in the fading 
year ; but he was past that now. 

And only he? Or has the like appeal been ever made, by 
seventy years at once upon an English labourer’s head, and 
made in vain! 

The streets were full of motion, and the shops were decked 
out gaily. The New Year, like an Infant Heir to the whole 
world, was waited for, with welcomes, presents, and rejoicings. 
There were books and toys for the New Year, glittering trin- 
kets for the New Year, dresses for the New Year, schemes 
of fortune for the New Year; new inventions to beguile it. 
Its life was parcelled out in almanacks and pocket-books; the 
coming of its moons, and stars, and tides, was known before- 
hand to the moment; all the workings of its seasons in their 
days and nights, were calculated with as much precision as 
Mr. Filer could work sums in men and women. 

The New Year, the New Year. Everywhere the New 
Year! The Old Year was already looked upon as dead; and 
its effects were selling cheap, like some drowned mariner’s 
aboard ship. Its patterns were Last Year’s and going at a 
sacrifice, before its breath was gone. Its treasures were mere 
dirt, beside the riches of its unborn successor! 

Trotty had no portion, to his thinking, in the New Year or 
the Old. 

“ Put ’em down. Put ’em down ! Facts and Figures, Facts 
and Figures! Good old Times, Good old Times! Put ’erti 


THE CHIMES 105 

down, Put ’em down ! ” — his trot went to that measure, and 
would fit itself to nothing else. 

But even that one, melancholy as it was, brought him, in 
due time, to the end of his journey. To the mansion of Sir 
Joseph Bowley, Member of Parliament. 

The door was opened by a Porter. Such a Porter ! Not of 
Toby’s order. Quite another thing. His place was the ticket 
though ; not Toby’s. 

This Porter underwent some hard panting before he could 
speak ; having breathed himself by coming incautiously out of 
his chair, without first taking time to think about it and com- 
pose his mind. When he had found his voice — which it took 
him some time to do, for it was a long way off, and hidden 
under a load of meat — he said in a fat whisper. 

Who’s it from?” 

Toby told him. 

“ You’re to take it in, yourself,” said the Porter, pointing 
to a room at the end of a long passage, opening from the 
hall. Everything goes straight in, on this day of the year. 
You’re not a bit too soon, for the carriage is at the door now, 
and they have only come to town for a couple of hours, a’ 
purpose.” 

Toby wiped his feet (which were quite dry already) with 
great care, and took the way pointed out to him ; observing as 
he went that it was an awfully grand house, but hushed and 
covered up, as if the family were in the country. Knocking at 
the room door, he was told to enter from within; and doing 
so found himself in a spacious library, where, at a table strewn 
with files and papers, were a stately lady in a bonnet; and 
a not very stately gentleman in black who wrote from her 
dictation while another, and an older, and a much statelier 
gentleman, whose hat and cane were on the table, walked up 
and down, with one hand in his breast, and looked complacently 
from time to time at his own picture — full length ; a very full 
length — hanging over the fireplace. 

What is this ? ” said the last-named gentleman. “ Mr. 
Fish, will you have the goodness to attend?” 

Mr. Fish begged pardon, and taking the letter from Toby, 
handed it, with great respect. 

'' From Alderman Cute, Sir Joseph.” 


io6 


THE CHIMES 


“Is this all? Have you nothing else, Porter?’^ inquired 
Sir Joseph. 

Toby replied in the negative. 

“ You have no bill or demand upon me; my name is Bowley, 
Sir Joseph Bowley; of any kind from anybody, have you?” 
said Sir Joseph. “ If you have, present it. There is a cheque- 
book by the side of Mr. Fish. I allow nothing to be carried 
into the New Year. Every description of account is settled 
in this house at the close of the old one. So that if death was 
to — ^to — 

“To cut,” suggested Mr. Fish. 

“ To sever. Sir,” returned Sir Joseph, with great asperity, 
“ the cord of existence — my affairs would be found, I hope, 
in a state of preparation.” 

“ My dear Sir Joseph ! ” said the lady, who was greatly 
younger than the gentleman. “ How shocking ! ” 

“ My Lady Bowley,” returned Sir Joseph, floundering now 
and then, as in the great depth of his observations, “ at this 
season of the year we should think of — of — ourselves. We 
should look into our — our accounts. We should feel that 
every return of so eventful a period in human transactions, 
involves matters of deep moment between a man and his — 
and his banker.” 

Sir Joseph delivered these words as if he felt the full mo- 
rality of what he was saying; and desired that even Trotty 
should have an opportunity of being improved by such dis- 
course. Possibly he had this end before him in still forbearing 
to break the seal of the letter, and in telling Trotty to wait 
where he was, a minute. 

“ You were desiring Mr. Fish to say, my lady,” observed Sir 
Joseph. 

“ Mr. Fish has said that, I believe,” returned his lady, glan- 
cing at the letter. “ But, upon my word. Sir Joseph, I don’t 
think I can let it go after all. It is so very dear.” 

“What is dear?” inquired Sir Joseph. 

“ That Charity, my love. They only allow two votes for a 
subscription of five pounds. Really monstrous ! ” 

“ My Lady Bowley,” returned Sir Joseph, “ you surprise me. 
Is the luxury of feeling in proportion to the number of votes ; 
or is it, to a rightly constituted mind, in proportion to the 


THE CHIMES 


107 

number of applicants, and the wholesome state of mind to 
which their canvassing reduces them? Is there no excite- 
ment of the purest kind in having two votes to dispose of 
among fifty people?” 

“ Not to me, I acknowledge,” replied the lady. “ It bores 
one. Besides, one can’t oblige one’s acquaintance. But you 
are the Poor Man’s Friend, you know, Sir Joseph. You think 
otherwise.” 

“ I am the Poor Man’s Friend,” observed Sir Joseph, glan- 
cing at the poor man present. “ As such I may be taunted. 
As such I have been taunted. But I ask no other title.” 

“Bless him for a noble gentleman!” thought Trotty. 

“ I don’t agree with Cute here, for instance,” said Sir Joseph, 
holding out the letter. “ I don’t agree with the Filer party. 
I don’t agree with any party. My friend the Poor Man, has 
no business with anything of that sort, and nothing of that 
sort has any business with him. My friend the Poor Man, in 
my district, is my business. No man or body of men has any 
right to interfere between my friend and me. That is the 
ground I take. I assume a — a paternal character towards 
my friend. I say, ‘ My good fellow, I will treat you pater- 
nally.’ ” 

Toby listened with great gravity, and began to feel more 
comfortable. 

“ Your only business, my good fellow,” pursued Sir Joseph, 
looking abstractly at Toby; “your only business in life is 
with me. You needn’t trouble yourself to think about any- 
thing. I will think for you ; I know what is good for you ; I 
am your perpetual parent. Such is the dispensation of an all- 
wise Providence! Now, the design of your creation is: not 
that you should swill, and guzzle, and associate your enjoy- 
ments, brutally, with food ” — Toby thought remorsefully of 
the tripe — “ but that you should feel the Dignity of Labour ; 
go forth erect into the cheerful morning air, and — and stop 
there. Live hard and temperately, be respectful, exercise your 
self-denial, bring up your family on next to nothing, pay your 
rent as regularly as the clock strikes, be punctual in my deal- 
ings (I set you a good example; you will find Mr. Fish, my 
confidential secretary, with a cash-box before him at all times) ; 
and you may trust me to be your Friend and Father.” 


io8 


THE CHIMES 


'' Nice children, indeed, Sir Joseph ! ” said the lady, with 
a shudder. “ Rheumatisms, and fevers, and crooked legs, 
and asthmas, and all kinds of horrors ! ” 

My lady,” returned Sir Joseph, with solemnity, not the 
less am I the Poor Man’s Friend and Father. Not the less 
shall he receive encouragement at my hands. Every quarter- 
day he will be put in communication with Mr. Fish. Every 
New Year’s Day, myself and friends will drink his health. 
Once every year, myself and friends will address him with the 
deepest feeling. Once in his life, he may even perhaps receive ; 
in public, in the presence of the gentry ; a Trifle from a Friend. 
And when, upheld no more by these stimulants, and the Dig- 
nity of Labour, he sinks into his comfortable grave, then my 
lady ” — here Sir Joseph blew his nose — “ I will be a Friend 
and Father — on the same terms — to his children.” 

Toby was greatly moved. 

“ Oh ! You have a thankful family. Sir Joseph ! ” cried his 
wife. 

My lady,” said Sir Joseph, quite majestically, “ Ingrati- 
tude is known to be the sin of that class. I expect no other 
return.” 

Ah ! Born bad ! ” thought Toby. “ Nothing melts us.” 

“ What man can do, I do,” pursued Sir Joseph. “ I do my 
duty as the Poor Man’s Friend and Father; and I endeavour 
to educate his mind, by inculcating on all occasions the one 
great moral lesson which that class requires. That is, entire 
Dependence on myself. They have no business whatever with 
— with themselves. If wicked and designing persons tell them 
otherwise, and they become impatient and discontented, and 
are guilty of insubordinate conduct and black-hearted ingrati- 
tude; which is undoubtedly the case; I am their Friend and 
Father still. It is so Ordained. It is in the nature of things.” 

With that great sentiment, he opened the Alderman’s letter ; 
and read it. 

Very polite and attentive, I am sure!” exclaimed Sir 
Joseph. My lady, the Alderman is so obliging as to remind 
me that he has had ‘ the distinguished honour ’ — he is very 
good — of meeting me at the house of our mutual friend Dee- 
dles, the banker ; and he does me the favour to inquire whether 
it will be agreeable to me to have Will Fern put down.” 


THE CHIMES 


109 

" Most agreeable ! ” replied my Lady Bowley. The worst 
man among them! He has been committing a robbery, I 
hope ? ” 

“ Why, no,” said Sir Joseph, referring to the letter. “ Not 
quite. Very near. Not quite. He came up to London, it 
seems, to look for employment (to better himself — that’s his 
story), and being found at night asleep in a shed, was taken 
into custody and carried next morning before the Alderman. 
The Alderman observes (very properly) that he is determined 
to put this sort of thing down ; and that if it will be agreeable 
to me to have Will Fern put down, he will be happy to begin 
with him.” 

“ Let him be made an example of, by all means,” returned 
the lady. “ Last winter, when I introduced pinking and eye- 
let-holing among the men and boys in the village, as a nice 
evening employment, and had the lines, 

O let us love our occupations, 

Bless the squire and his relations, 

Live upon our daily rations, 

And always know our proper stations, 

set to music on the new system, for them to sing the while; 
this very Fern — I see him now — touched that hat of his, and 
said, ‘ I humbly ask your pardon, my lady, but an*t I some- 
thing different from a great girl ? ’ I expected it, of course ; 
who can expect anything but insolence and ingratitude from 
that class of people! That is not to the purpose, however. 
Sir Joseph ! Make an example of him ! ” 

‘‘ Hem ! ” coughed Sir Joseph. “ Mr. Fish, if you’ll have the 
goodness to attend — ” 

Mr. Fish immediately seized his pen, and wrote from Sir 
Joseph’s dictation. 

“ Private. My dear Sir. I am very much indebted to you 
for your courtesy in the matter of the man William Fern, of 
whom, I regret to add, I can say nothing favourable. I have 
uniformly considered myself in the light of his Friend and 
Father, but have been repaid (a common case I grieve to say) 
with ingratitude, and constant opposition to my plans. He 
is a turbulent and rebellious spirit. His character will not 
bear investigation. Nothing will persuade him to be happy 


110 


THE CHIMES 


when he might. Under these circumstances, it appears to 
me, I own, that when he comes before you again (as you in- 
formed me he promised to do to-morrow, pending your in- 
quiries, and I think he may be so far relied upon), his 
committal for some short term as a Vagabond, would be a 
service to society, and would be a salutary example in a coun- 
try where — for the sake of those who are, through good and 
evil report, the Friends and Fathers of the Poor, as well as 
with a view to that, generally speaking, misguided class them- 
selves — examples are greatly needed. And I am,” and so 
forth. 

“ It appears,” remarked Sir Joseph when he had signed this 
letter, and Mr. Fish was sealing it, “ as if this were Ordained : 
really. At the close of the year, I wind up my account and 
strike my balance, even with William Fern ! ” 

Trotty, who had long ago relapsed, and was very low-spir- 
ited, stepped forward with a rueful face to take the letter. 

With my compliments and thanks,” said Sir Joseph. 
‘‘ Stop!” 

“Stop!” echoed Mr. Fish. 

“ You have heard, perhaps,” said Joseph, oracularly, “ cer- 
tain remarks into which I have been led respecting the solemn 
period of time at which we have arrived, and the duty imposed 
upon us of settling our affairs, and being prepared. You have 
observed that I don’t shelter myself behind my superior stand- 
ing in society, but that Mr. Fish — that gentleman — has a 
cheque-book at his elbow, and is in fact here, to enable me 
to turn over a perfectly new leaf, and enter on the epoch be- 
fore us with a clean account. Now, my friend, can you lay 
your hand upon your heart, and say that you also have made 
preparations for a New Year? ” 

“ I am afraid. Sir,” stammered Trotty, looking meekly at 
him, “ that I am a — a — little behindhand with the world.” 

“ Behindhand with the world ! ” repeated Sir Joseph Bowley, 
in a tone of terrible distinctness. 

“ I am afraid. Sir,” faltered Trotty, “ that there’s a matter 
of ten or twelve shillings owing to Mrs. Chickenstalker.” 

“ To Mrs. Chickenstalker ! ” repeated Sir Joseph, in the 
same tone as before. 

“A shop. Sir,” exclaimed Toby, “in the general line; also 


THE CHIMES 


111 


a — a little money on account of rent. A very little, Sir. It 
oughtn’t to be owing, I know, but we have been hard put to it, 
indeed ! ” 

Sir Joseph looked at his lady, and at Mr. Fish, and at 
Trotty, one after another, twice all round. He then made a 
despondent gesture with both hands at once, as if he gave the 
thing up altogether. 

“ How a man, even among this improvident and impracti- 
cable race ; an old man ; a man grown grey ; can look a New 
Year in the face, with his affairs in this condition; how he can 
lie down on his bed at night, and get up again in the morning, 
and — There!” he said, turning his back on Trotty. ‘‘Take 
the letter. Take the letter!” 

“ I heartily wish it was otherwise. Sir,” said Trotty, anxious 
to excuse himself. “We have been tried very hard.” 

Sir Joseph still repeating “ Take the letter, take the let- 
ter ! ” and Mr. Fish not only saying the same thing, but giving 
additional force to the request by motioning the bearer to the 
door, he had nothing for it but to make his bow and leave the 
house. And in the street, poor Trotty pulled his worn old 
hat down on his head, to hide the grief he felt at getting no 
hold on the New Year, anywhere. 

He didn’t even lift his hat to look up at the Bell tower when 
he came to the old church on his return. He halted there a 
moment, from habit ; and knew that it was growing dark, and 
that the steeple rose above him, indistinct and faint, in the 
murky air. He knew, too, that the Chimes would ring im- 
mediately ; and that they sounded to his fancy, at such a time, 
like voices in the clouds. But he only made the more haste 
to deliver the Alderman’s letter, and get out of the way be- 
fore they began ; for he dreaded to hear them tagging 
“ Friends and Fathers, Friends and Fathers,” to the burden 
they had rung out last. 

Toby discharged himself of his commission, therefore, with 
all possible speed, and set off trotting homeward. But what 
with his pace, which was at best an awkward one in the street ; 
and what with his hat, which didn’t improve it; he trotted 
against somebody in less than no time, and was sent staggering 
out into the road. 

“ I beg your pardon, I’m sure! ” said Trotty, pulling up his 


112 


THE CHIMES 


hat in great confusion, and between the hat and the torn lining, 
fixing his head into a kind of bee-hive. I hope I haven’t 
hurt you.” 

As to hurting anybody, Toby was not such an absolute Sam- 
son, but that he was much more likely to be hurt himself : and 
indeed, he had flown out into the road, like a shuttlecock. He 
had such an opinion of his own strength, however, that he was 
in real concern for the other party : and said again, 

“ I hope I haven’t hurt you ? ” 

The man against whom he had run ; a sun-browned, sinewy, 
country-looking man, with grizzled hair, and a rough chin; 
stared at him for a moment, as if he suspected him to be in 
jest. But satisfied of his good faith, he answered: 

“ No, friend. You have not hurt me.” 

“Nor the child, I hope?” said Trotty. 

“ Nor the child,” returned the man. “ I thank you kindly.’' 

As he said so, he glanced at a little girl he carried in his 
arms, asleep; and shading her face with the long end of 
the poor handkerchief he wore about his throat, went slowly 
on. 

The tone in which he said “ I thank you kindly,” penetrated 
Trotty ’s heart. He was so jaded and foot-sore, and so soiled 
with travel, and looked about him so forlorn and strange, that 
it was a comfort to him to be able to thank any one : no matter 
for how little. Toby stood gazing after him as he plodded 
wearily away : with the child’s arm clinging round his neck. 

At the figure in the worn shoes — now the very shade and 
ghost of shoes — rough leather leggins, common frock, and 
broad slouched hat, Trotty stood gazing: blind to the whole 
street. And at the child’s arm, clinging round its neck. 

Before he merged into the darkness, the traveller stopped ; 
and looking round, and seeing Trotty standing there yet, 
seemed undecided whether to return or go on. After doing 
first the one and then the other, he came back; and Trotty 
went half way to meet him. 

“ You can tell me, perhaps,” said the man with a faint 
smile, “ and if you can I am sure you will, and I’d rather ask 
you than another — where Alderman Cute lives.” 

“ Close at hand,” replied Toby. “ I’ll show you his house 
with pleasure.” 


THE CHIMES 


113 

“ I was to have gone to him elsewhere to-morrow,” said the 
man, accompanying Toby, “ but I’m uneasy under suspicion, 
and want to clear myself, and to be free to go and seek my 
bread — I don’t know where. So, maybe he’ll forgive my going 
to his house to-night.” 

“ It’s impossible,” cried Toby with a start, “ that your name’s 
Fern!” 

Eh ! ” cried the other, turning on him in astonishment. 

‘‘ Fern I Will Fern! ” said Trotty. 

“ That’s my name,” replied the other. 

‘‘ Why then,” cried Trotty, seizing him by the arm, and 
looking cautiously round, ‘‘ for Heaven’s sake don’t go to him ! 
Don’t go to him! He’ll put you down as sure as ever you 
were born. Here! come up this alley, and I’ll tell you what 
I mean. Don’t go to him/' 

His new acquaintance looked as if he thought him mad, but 
he bore him company nevertheless. When they were shrouded 
from observation, Trotty told him what he knew, and what 
character he had received, and all about it. 

The subject of his history listened to it with a calmness 
that surprised him. He did not contradict or interrupt it once. 
He nodded his head now and then — more in corroboration of 
an old and worn-out story, it appeared, than in refutation of it ; 
and once or twice threw back his hat, and passed his freckled 
hand over a brow, where every furrow he had ploughed seemed 
to have set its image in little. But he did no more. 

“ It’s true enough in the main,” he said, “ master. I could 
sift grain from husk here and there, but let it be as ’tis. What 
odds ? I have gone against his plans ; to my misfortun’. I 
can’t help it; I should do the like to-morrow. As to char- 
acter, them gentlefolks will search and search, and pry and 
pry, and have it as free from spot or speck in us, afore they’ll 
help us to a dry good word ! Well ! I hope they don’t lose 
good opinion as easy as we do, or their lives is strict indeed, 
and hardly worth the keeping. For myself, master, I never 
took with that hand ” — holding it before him — '' what wasn’t 
my own; and never held it back from work, however hard, 
or poorly paid. Whoever can deny it, let him chop it off! 
But when work won’t maintain me like a human creetur ; when 
my living is so bad, that I am Hungry, out of doors and in; 


THE CHIMES 


114 

when I see a whole working life begin that way, go on that 
way, and end that way, without a chance or change; then I 
say to the gentlefolks ‘ Keep away from me ! Let my cottage 
be. My doors is dark enough without your darkening of ’em 
more. Don’t look for me to come up into the Park to help 
the show when there’s a Birthday, or a fine Speechmaking, or 
what not. Act your Plays and Games without me, and be 
welcome to ’em and enjoy ’em. We’ve nowt to do with one 
another. I’m best let alone ! ’ ” 

Seeing that the child in his arms had opened her eyes, and 
was looking about her in wonder, he checked himself to say a 
word or two of foolish prattle in her ear, and stand her on the 
ground beside him. Then slowly winding one of her long 
tresses round and round his rough forefinger like a ring, while 
she hung about his dusty leg, he said to Trotty, 

I’m not a cross-grained man by natur’, I believe ; and easy 
satisfied. I’m sure. I bear no ill will against none of ’em: I 
only want to live like one of the Almighty’s creeturs. I 
can’t, I don’t; and so there’s a pit dug between me and 
them that can and do. There’s others like me. You might 
tell ’em off by hundreds and by thousands, sooner than by 
ones.” 

Trotty knew he spoke the Truth in this, and shook his head 
to signify as much. 

‘‘ I’ve got a bad name this way,” said Fern ; and I’m not 
likely. I’m afeared, to get a better. ’Tan’t lawful to be out 
of sorts, and I am out of sorts, though God knows I’d sooner 
bear a cheerful spirit if I could. Well ! I don’t know as this 
Alderman could hurt me much by sending me to gaol; but 
without a friend to speak a word for me, he might do it ; and 
you see — ! ” pointing downward with his finger, at the child. 

‘‘ She has a beautiful face,” said Trotty. 

“ Why, yes ! ” replied the other in a low voice, as he gently 
turned it up with both his hands towards his own, and looked 
upon it steadfastly. I’ve thought so, many times. I’ve 
thought so, when my hearth was very cold, and cupboard very 
bare. I thought so t’other night, when we were taken like 
two thieves. But they — they shouldn’t try the little face too 
often, should they, Lilian ? That’s hardly fair upon a man ! ” 

He sank his voice so low, and gazed upon her with an air 


THE CHIMES 115 

so stern and strange, that Toby, to divert the current of his 
thoughts, inquired if his wife were living. 

“ I never had one,” he returned, shaking his head. “ She’s 
my brother’s child: an orphan. Nine year old, though you’d 
hardly think it; but she’s tired and worn out now. They’d 
have taken care on her, the Union; eight-and-twenty mile 
away from where we live; between four walls (as they took 
care of my old father when he couldn’t work no more, though 
he didn’t trouble ’em long) ; but I took her instead, and she’s 
lived with me ever since. Her mother had a friend once, in 
London here. We are trying to find her, and to find work too ; 
but it’s a large place. Never mind. More room for us to 
walk about in, Lilly ! ” 

Meeting the child’s eyes with a smile which melted Toby 
more than tears, he shook him by the hand. 

“ I don’t so much as know your name,” he said, “ but I’ve 
opened my heart free to you, for I’m thankful to you; with 
good reason. I’ll take your advice, and keep clear of this — ” 
Justice,” suggested Toby. 

‘‘ Ah ! ” he said. “ If that’s the name they give him. This 
Justice. And to-morrow will try whether there’s better 
fortun’ to be met with, somewheres near London. Good night. 
A Happy New Year ! ” 

“ Stay! ” cried Trotty, catching at his hand, as he relaxed 
his grip. “ Stay I The New Year never can be happy to me, 
if we part like this. The New Year never can be happy to me, 
if I see the child and you, go wandering away, you don’t know 
where, without a shelter for your heads. Come home with 
me! I’m a poor man, living in a poor place; but I can give 
you lodging for one night and never miss it. Come home with 
me! Here! I’ll take her !” cried Trotty, lifting up the child. 
“ A pretty one ! I’d carry twenty times her weight, and never 
know I’d got it. Tell me if I go too quick for you. I’m very 
fast. I always was!” Trotty said this, taking about six of 
his trotting paces to one stride of his fatigued companion ; and 
with his thin legs quivering again beneath the load he bore. 

“ Why, she’s as light,” said Trotty, trotting in his speech as 
well as in his gait; for he couldn’t bear to be thanked, and 
dreaded a moment’s pause ; “ as light as a feather. Lighter 
than a Peacock’s feather — a great deal lighter. Here we are, 


ii6 


THE CHIMES 


and here we go ! Round this first turning to the right, Uncle 
Will, and past the pump, and sharp off up the passage to the 
left, right opposite the public-house. Here we are and here 
we go ! Cross over, Uncle Will, and mind the kidney pieman 
at the corner ! Here we are and here we go ! Down the Mews 
here. Uncle Will, and stop at the black door, with ‘ T. Veck, 
Ticket Porter ’ wrote upon a board ; and here we are and here 
we go, and here we are indeed, my precious Meg, surprising 
you I ” 

With which words Trotty, in a breathless state, set the child 
down before his daughter in the middle of the floor. The little 
visitor looked once at Meg ; and doubting nothing in that face, 
but trusting everything she saw there; ran into her arms. 

“Here we are and here we go!” cried Trotty, running 
round the room, and choking audibly. “ Here, Uncle Will 1 
Here’s a fire you know ! Why don’t you come to the fire ? 
Oh, here we are and here we go ! Meg, my precious darling, 
where’s the kettle ? Here it is and here it goes, and it’ll bile in 
no time I ” 

Trotty really had picked up the kettle somewhere or other 
in the course of his wild career, and now put it on the fire: 
while Meg, seating the child in a warm corner, knelt down on 
the ground before her, and pulled off her shoes, and dried 
her wet feet on a cloth. Ay, and she laughed at Trotty too — 
so pleasantly, so cheerfully, that Trotty could have blessed her 
where she kneeled : for he had seen that, when they entered, she 
was sitting by the fire in tears. 

“ Why, father I ” said Meg. “ You’re crazy to-night, I think. 
I don’t know what the Bells would say to that. Poor little 
feet. How cold they are ! ” 

“ Oh, they’re warmer now I ” exclaimed the child. “ They’re 
quite warm now.” 

“ No, no, no,” said Meg. “ We haven’t rubbed ’em half 
enough. We’re so busy. So busy! And when they’re done, 
we’ll brush out the damp hair; and when that’s done, we’ll 
bring some colour to the poor pale face with fresh water ; and 
when that’s done, we’ll be so gay, and brisk, and happy — ! ” 

The child, in a burst of sobbing, clasped her round the neck ; 
caressed her fair cheek with its hand ; and said, “ Oh, Meg I 
oh, dear Meg ! ” 


THE CHIMES 


117 

Toby’s blessing could have done no more. Who could do 
more ! 

“ Why, father ! ” cried Meg, after a pause. 

Here I am and here I go, my dear,” said Trotty. 

Good Gracious me ! ” cried Meg. He’s crazy ! He’s put 
the dear child’s bonnet on the kettle, and hung the lid behind the 
door ! ” 

“ I didn’t go to do it, my love,” said Trotty, hastily repair- 
ing this mistake. “ Meg, my dear? ” 

Meg looked towards him and saw that he had elaborately sta- 
tioned himself behind the chair of their male visitor, where 
with many mysterious gestures he was holding up the sixpence 
he had earned. 

“ I see, my dear,” said Trotty, as I was coming in, half 
an ounce of tea lying somewhere on the stairs ; and I’m pretty 
sure there was a bit of bacon too. As I don’t remember where 
it was exactly; I’ll go myself and try to find ’em.” 

With this inscrutable artifice, Toby withdrew to purchase 
the viands he had spoken of, for ready money, at Mrs. Chicken- 
stalker’s ; and presently came back, pretending he had not been 
able to find them, at first, in the dark. 

But here they are at last,” said Trotty, setting out the tea 
things, “ all correct ! I was pretty sure it was tea, and a 
rasher. So it is. Meg, my pet, if you’ll just make the tea, 
while your unworthy father toasts the bacon, we shall be ready, 
immediate. It’s a curious circumstance,” said Trotty, proceed- 
ing in his cookery, with the assistance of the toasting-fork, 
‘‘ curious, but well known to my friends, that I never care, my- 
self, for rashers, nor for tea. I like to see other people enjoy 
’em,” said Trotty, speaking very loud, to impress the fact upon 
his guest, but to me, as food, they’re disagreeable.” 

Yet Trotty snifiFed the savour of the hissing bacon — ah! — 
as if he liked it; and when he poured the boiling water in the 
tea-pot, looked lovingly down into the depths of that snug 
cauldron, and sufifered the fragrant steam to curl about his 
nose, and wreathe his head and face in a thick cloud. How- 
ever, for all this, he neither ate nor drank, except at the very 
beginning, a mere morsel for form’s sake, which he appeared 
to eat with infinite relish, but declared was perfectly uninterest- 
ing to him. 


ii8 


THE CHIMES 


No. Trotty’s occupation was, to see Will Fern and Lilian 
eat and drink; and so was Meg’s. And never did spectators 
at a city dinner or court banquet find such high delight in 
seeing others feast : although it were a monarch or a pope : as 
those two did, in looking on that night. Meg smiled at Trotty, 
Trotty laughed at Meg. Meg shook her head, and made belief 
to clap her hands, applauding Trotty; Trotty conveyed, in 
dumb-show, unintelligible narratives of how and when and 
where he had found their visitors, to Meg; and they were 
happy. Very happy. 

Although,” thought Trotty, sorrowfully, as he watched 
Meg’s face ; that match is broken off, I see ! ” 

Now, I’ll tell you what,” said Trotty after tea. “ The 
little one, she sleeps with Meg, I know.” 

With good Meg ! ” cried the child, caressing her. With 
Meg.” 

“ That’s right,” said Trotty. ‘‘ And I shouldn’t wonder if 
she’d kiss Meg’s father, won’t she? Fm Meg’s father.” 

Mightily delighted Trotty was, when the child went timidly 
towards him, and having kissed him, fell back upon Meg 
again. 

She’s as sensible as Solomon,” said Trotty. Here we 
come and here we — no, we don’t — don’t mean that — I — what 
was I saying, Meg, my precious ? ” 

Meg looked towards their guest, who leaned upon her chair, 
and with his face turned from her, fondled the child’s head, 
half hidden in her lap. 

‘‘To be sure,” said Toby. “To be sure! I don’t know 
what I’m rambling on about, to-night. My wits are wool- 
gathering, I think. Will Fern, you come along with me. 
You’re tired to death, and broken down for want of rest. You 
come along with me.” 

The man still played with the child’s curls, still leaned upon 
Meg’s chair, still turned away his face. He didn’t speak, but 
in his rough coarse fingers, clenching and expanding in the 
fair hair of the child, there was an eloquence that said enough. 

“Yes, yes,” said Trotty, answering unconsciously what he 
saw expressed in his daughter’s face. “ Take her with you, 
Meg. Get her to bed. There! Now Will, I’ll show you 
where you lie. It’s not much of a place : only a loft : but, hav- 


THE CHIMES 


119 

ing a loft, I always say, is one of the great conveniences of liv- 
ing in a mews ; and till this coach-house and stable gets a better 
let, we live here cheap. There's plenty of sweet hay up there, 
belonging to a neighbour ; and it's as clean as hands, and Meg 
can make it. Cheer up ! Don't give way. A new heart for 
a New Year, always ! " 

The hand released from the child's hair, had fallen, trem- 
bling, into Trotty's hand. So Trotty, talking without inter- 
mission, led him out as tenderly and easily as if he had been 
a child himself. 

Returning before Meg, he listened for an instant at the 
door of her little chamber; an adjoining room. The child was 
murmuring a simple Prayer before lying down to sleep; and 
when she had remembered Meg's name, Dearly, Dearly " — 
so her words ran — Trotty heard her stop and ask for his. 

It was some short time before the foolish little old fellow 
could compose himself to mend the fire, and draw his chair to 
the warm hearth. But, when he had done so, and had trimmed 
the light, he took his newspaper from his pocket, and began to 
read. Carelessly at first, and skimming up and down the col- 
umns; but with an earnest and a sad attention, very soon. 

For this same dreaded paper re-directed Trotty’s thoughts 
into the channel they had taken all that day, and which the 
day's events had so marked out and shaped. His interest in 
the two wanderers had set him on another course of thinking, 
and a happier one, for the time; but being alone again, and 
reading of the crimes and violences of the people, he relapsed 
into his former train. 

In this mood, he came to an account (and it was not the 
first he had ever read) of a woman who had laid her desperate 
hands not only on her own life but on that of her young child. 
A crime so terrible, and so revolting to his soul, dilated with 
the love of Meg, that he let the journal drop, and fell back in 
his chair, appalled. 

Unnatural and cruel ! " Toby cried. ‘‘ Unnatural and 
cruel ! None but people who were bad at heart, born bad : who 
had no business on the earth; could do such deeds. It’s too 
true, all I've heard to-day ; too just, too full of proof. We’re 
Bad ! ” 

The Chimes took up the words so suddenly — burst out so 


120 THE CHIMES 

loud, and clear, and sonorous — that the Bells seemed to strike 
him in his chair. 

And what was that they said? 

Toby Veck, Toby Veck, waiting for you, Toby! Toby 
Veck, Toby Veck, waiting for you, Toby! Come and see us, 
come and see us. Drag him to us, drag him to us, Haunt and 
hunt him, haunt and hunt him. Break his slumbers, break his 
slumbers! Toby Veck, Toby Veck, door open wide, Toby, 
Toby Veck, Toby Veck, door open wide, Toby — ” then fiercely 
back to their impetuous strain again, and ringing in the very 
bricks and plaster on the walls. 

Toby listened. Fancy, fancy ! His remorse for having run 
away from them that afternoon! No, no. Nothing of the 
kind. Again, again, and yet a dozen times again. Haunt 
and hunt him, haunt and hunt him. Drag him to us, drag him 
to us ! ” Deafening the whole town ! 

'' Meg,” said Trotty softly: tapping at her door. Do you 
hear anything?” 

I hear the Bells, father. Surely they’re very loud to- 
night.” 

“ Is she asleep?” said Toby, making an excuse for peeping 
in. 

“ So peacefully and happily ! I can’t leave her yet though, 
father. Look how she holds my hand ! ” 

“ Meg,” whispered Trotty. “ Listen to the Bells! ” 

She listened, with her face towards him all the time. But 
it underwent no change. She didn’t understand them. 

Trotty withdrew, resumed his seat by the fire, and once 
more listened by himself. He remained here a little time. 

It was impossible to bear it ; their energy was dreadful. 

“ li the tower-door is really open,” said Toby, hastily lay- 
ing aside his apron, but never thinking of his hat, what’s to 
hinder me from going up into the steeple and satisfying myself ? 
If it’s shut, I don’t want any other satisfaction. That’s 
enough.” 

He was pretty certain as he slipped out quietly into the 
street that he should find it shut and locked, for he knew the 
door well, and had so rarely seen it open, that he couldn’t 
reckon above three times in all. It was a low arched portal, 
outside the church, in a dark nook behind a column ; and had 


THE CHIMES 


121 


such great iron hinges, and such a monstrous lock, that there 
was more hinge and lock than door. 

But what was his astonishment when, coming bareheaded 
to the church ; and putting his hand into this dark nook, with 
a certain misgiving that it might be unexpectedly seized, and 
a shivering propensity to draw it back again; he found that 
the door, which opened outwards, actually stood ajar! 

He thought, on the first surprise, of going back ; or of get- 
ting a light, or a companion; but his courage aided him im- 
mediately, and he determined to ascend alone. 

'' What have I to fear ? said Trotty. It’s a church ! Be- 
sides, the ringers may be there, and have forgotten to shut the 
door.” 

So he went in ; feeling his way as he went, like a blind man ; 
for it was very dark. And very quiet, for the Chimes were 
silent. 

The dust from the street had blown into the recess; and 
lying there, heaped up, made it so soft and velvet-like to the 
foot, that there was something startling even in that. The 
narrow stair was so close to the door, too, that he stumbled 
at the very first ; and shutting the door upon himself, by strik- 
ing it with his foot, and causing it to rebound back heavily, 
he couldn’t open it again. 

This was another reason, however, for going on. Trotty 
groped his way, and went on. Up, up, up, and round and 
round; and up, up, up; higher, higher, higher up! 

It was a disagreeable staircase for that groping work ; so low 
and narrow that his groping hand was always touching some- 
thing; and it often felt so like a man or ghostly figure standing 
up erect and making room for him to pass without discovery, 
that he would rub the smooth wall upward searching for its 
face, and downward searching for its feet, while a chill tingling 
crept all over him. Twice or thrice, a door or niche broke the 
monotonous surface ; and then it seemed a gap as wide as the 
whole church ; and he felt on the brink of an abyss, and going 
to tumble headlong down ; until he found the wall again. 

Still up, up, up; and round and round; and up, up, up; 
higher, higher, higher up. 

At length, the dull and stifling atmosphere began to freshen : 
presently to feel quite windy : presently it blew so strong, that 


122 


THE CHIMES 


he could hardly keep his legs. But he got to an arched win- 
dow in the tower, breast high, and holding tight, looked down 
upon the housetops, on the smoking chimneys, on the blur 
and blotch of lights (towards the place where Meg was won- 
dering where he was and calling to him perhaps), all kneaded 
up together in a leaven of mist and darkness. 

This was the belfry, where the ringers came. He had caught 
hold of one of the frayed ropes which hung down through 
apertures in the oaken roof. At first he started, thinking 
it was hair; then trembled at the very thought of waking the 
deep Bell. The Bells themselves were higher. Higher, 
Trotty, in his fascination, or in working out the spell upon him, 
groped his way. By ladders now, and toilsomely, for it was 
steep, and not too certain holding for the feet. 

Up, up, up; and climb and clamber; up, up, up; higher, 
higher, higher up ! 

Until, ascending through the floor, and pausing with his 
head just raised above its beams, he came among the Bells. 
It was barely possible to make out their great shapes in the 
gloom; but there they were. Shadowy, and dark, and dumb. 

A heavy sense of dread and loneliness fell instantly upon 
him, as he climbed into this airy nest of stone and metal. 
His head went round and round. He listened, and then raised 
a wild ‘‘Hallo!’’ 

Hallo! was mournfully protracted by the echoes. 

Giddy, confused, and out of breath, and frightened, Toby 
looked about him vacantly, and sank down in a swoon. 


THIRD QUARTER 

B lack are the brooding clouds and troubled the deep 
waters, when the Sea of Thought, first heaving from a 
calm, gives up its Dead. Monsters uncouth and wild, arise 
in premature, imperfect resurrection; the several parts and 
shapes of different things are joined and mixed by chance; 
and when, and how, and by what wonderful degrees, each 
separates from each, and every sense and object of the mind 
resumes its usual form and lives again, no man — though every 


THE CHIMES 


123 

man is every day the casket of this type of the Great Mystery 
— can tell. 

So, when and how the darkness of the night-black steeple 
changed to shining light; when and how the solitary tower 
was peopled with a myriad figures ; when and how the whis- 
pered “ Haunt and hunt him,” breathing monotonously through 
his sleep or swoon, became a voice exclaiming in the waking 
ears of Trotty, “Break his slumbers;” when and how he 
ceased to have a sluggish and confused idea that such things 
were, companioning a host of others that were not ; there are 
no dates or means to tell. But; awake and standing on his 
feet upon the boards where he had lately lain: he saw this 
Goblin Sight. 

He saw the tower, whither his charmed footsteps had 
brought him, swarming with dwarf phantoms, spirits, elfin 
creatures of the Bells. He saw them leaping, flying, dropping, 
pouring from the Bells without a pause. He saw them, round 
him on the ground; above him, in the air; clambering from 
him by the ropes below; looking down upon him, from the 
massive iron-girded beams ; peeping in upon him, through the 
chinks and loopholes in the walls; spreading away and away 
from him in enlarging circles, as the water-ripples give place 
to a huge stone that suddenly comes splashing in among them. 
He saw them, of all aspects and all shapes. He saw them ugly, 
handsome, crippled, exquisitely formed. He saw them young, 
he saw them old, he saw them kind, he S'lw them cruel, he saw 
them merry, he saw them grim ; he saw them dance, and heard 
them sing ; he saw them tear their hair, and heard them howl. 
He saw the air thick with them. He saw them come and go, in- 
cessantly. He saw them riding downward, soaring upward, 
sailing off afar, perching near at hand, all restless and all 
violently active. Stone, and brick, and slate, and tile, became 
transparent to him as to them. He saw them in the houses, 
busy at the sleepers’ beds. He saw them soothing people in 
their dreams ; he saw them beating them with knotted whips ; 
he saw them yelling in their ears ; he saw them playing softest 
music on their pillows; he saw them cheering some with the 
songs of birds and the perfume of flowers ; he saw them flash- 
ing awful faces on the troubled rest of others, from enchanted 
mirrors which they carried in their hands, 


THE CHIMES 


124 

He saw these creatures, not only among sleeping men but 
waking also, active in pursuits irreconcileable with one an- 
other, and possessing or assuming natures the most opposite. 
He saw one buckling on innumerable wings to increase his 
speed; another loading himself with chains and weights to 
retard his. He saw some putting the hands of clocks forward, 
some putting the hands of clocks backward, some endeavour- 
ing to stop the clock entirely. He saw them representing, 
here a marriage ceremony, there a funeral; in this chamber 
an election, in that a ball; everywhere, restless and untiring 
motion. 

Bewildered by the host of shifting and extraordinary figures, 
as well as by the uproar of the Bells, which all this while were 
ringing, Trotty clung to a wooden pillar for support, and 
turned his white face here and there, in mute and stunned as- 
tonishment. 

As he gazed, the Chimes stopped. Instantaneous change! 
The whole swarm fainted! their forms collapsed, their speed 
deserted them ; they sought to fly, but in the act of falling died 
and melted into air. No fresh supply succeeded them. One 
straggler leaped down pretty briskly from the surface of the 
Great Bell, and alighted on his feet, but he was dead and gone 
before he could turn around. Some few of the late company 
who had gambolled in the tower, remained there, spinning over 
and over a little longer ; but these became at every turn more 
faint, and few, and feeble, and soon went the way of the rest. 
The last of all was one small hunchback, who had got into 
an echoing corner, where he twirled and twirled, and floated 
by himself a long time; showing such perseverance, that at 
last he dwindled to a leg and even to a foot, before he finally 
retired; but he vanished in the end, and then the tower was 
silent. 

Then and not before, did Trotty see in every Bell a bearded 
figure of the bulk and stature of the Bell — incomprehensibly, 
a figure and the Bell itself. Gigantic, grave, and darkly watch- 
ful of him, as he stood rooted to the ground. 

Mysterious and awful figures! Resting on nothing; poised 
in the night air of the tower, with their draped and hooded 
heads merged in the dim roof ; motionless and shadowy. Shad- 
owy and dark, although he saw them by some light belonging 


THE CHIMES 125 

to themselves — none else was there — each with its muffled hand 
upon its goblin mouth. 

He could not plunge down wildly through the opening in 
the floor, for all power of motion had deserted him. Other- 
wise he would have done so — ay, would have thrown himself, 
headforemost, from the steeple-top, rather than have seen them 
watching him with eyes that would have waked and watched 
although the pupils had been taken out. 

Again, again, the dread and terror of the lonely place, and 
of the wild and fearful night that reigned there, touched him 
like a spectral hand. His distance from all help; the long, 
dark, winding, ghost-beleaguered way that lay between him 
and the earth on which men lived ; his being high, high, high, 
up there, where it had made him dizzy to see the birds fly in 
the day; cut off from all good people, who at such an hour 
were safe at home and sleeping in their beds; all this struck 
coldly through him, not as a reflection but a bodily sensation. 
Meantime his eyes and thoughts and fears, were fixed upon the 
watchful figures; which, rendered unlike any figures of this 
world by the deep gloom and shade enwrapping and enfolding 
them, as well as by their looks and forms and supernatural 
hovering above the floor, were nevertheless as plainly to be seen 
as were the stalwart oaken frames, cross-pieces, bars and 
beams, set up there to support the Bells. These hemmed 
them, in a very forest of hewn timber ; from the entanglements, 
intricacies, and depths of which, as from among the boughs 
of a dead wood blighted for their phantom use, they kept their 
darksome and unwinking watch. 

A blast of air — how cold and chill ! — came moaning through 
the tower. As it died away, the Great Bell, or the Goblin of 
the Great Bell, spoke. 

‘‘ What visitor is this ! ” it said. The voice was low and 
deep, and Trotty fancied that it sounded in the other figures 
as well. 

I thought my name was called by the Chimes ! said 
Trotty, raising his hands in an attitude of supplication. “ I 
hardly know why I am here, or how I came. I have listened 
to the Chimes these many years. They have cheered me 
often.” 

“ And you have thanked them ? ’’ said the Bell. 


126 


THE CHIMES 


“ A thousand times ! ” cried Trotty. 

‘‘How?” 

“ I am a poor man,” faltered Trotty, “ and could only thank 
them in words.” 

“ And always so? ” inquired the Goblin of the Bell. “ Have 
you never done us wrong in words ? ” 

“ No! ” cried Trotty eagerly. 

“ Never done us foul, and false, and wicked wrong, in 
words ? ” pursued the Goblin of the Bell. 

Trotty was about to answer, “Never!” But he stopped, 
and was confused. 

“ The voice of Time,” said the Phantom, “ cries to man. 
Advance ! Time is for his advancement and improvement ; for 
his greater worth, his greater happiness, his better life; his 
progress onward to that goal within its knowledge and its view, 
and set there, in the period when Time and he began. Ages 
of darkness, wickedness, and violence, have come and gone: 
millions uncountable, have suffered, lived, and died: to point 
the way before him. Who seeks to turn him back, or stay him 
on his course, arrests a mighty engine which will strike the 
meddler dead; and be the fiercer and the wilder, ever, for its 
momentary check ! ” 

“ I never did so, to my knowledge. Sir,” said Trotty. “ It 
was quite by accident if I did. I wouldn’t go to do it. Pm 
sure.” 

“ Who puts into the mouth of Time, or of its servants,” said 
the Goblin of the Bell, “ a cry of lamentation for days which 
have had their trial and their failure, and have left deep traces 
of it which the blind may see — a cry that only serves the 
Present Time, by showing men how much it needs their help 
when any ears can listen to regrets for such a Past — who does 
this, does a wrong. And you have done that wrong to us, the 
Chimes.” 

Trotty’s first excess of fear was gone. But he had felt 
tenderly and gratefully towards the Bells, as you have seen; 
and when he heard himself arraigned as one who had offended 
them so weightily, his heart was touched with penitence and 
grief. 

“If you knew,” said Trotty, clasping his hands earnestly — 


THE CHIMES 


127 

or perhaps you do know — if you know how often you have 
kept me company; how often you have cheered me up when 
I’ve been low; how you were quite the plaything of my little 
daughter Meg (almost the only one she ever had) when first 
her mother died, and she and me were left alone — you won’t 
bear malice for a hasty word ! ” 

“ Who hears in us, the Chimes, one note bespeaking disre- 
gard, or stern regard, of any hope, or joy, or pain, or sorrow, 
of the many-sorrowed throng ; who hears us make response to 
any creed that gauges human passions and affections, as it 
gauges the amount of miserable food on which humanity may 
pine and wither ; does us wrong. That wrong you have done 
us ! ” said the Bell. 

“ I have ! ” said Trotty. O forgive me ! ” 

'' Who hears us echo the dull vermin of the earth : the Put- 
ters Down of crushed and broken natures, formed to be raised 
up higher than such maggots of the time can crawl or can 
conceive,” pursued the Goblin of the Bell : who does so, does 
us wrong. And you have done us wrong ! ” 

Not meaning it,” said Trotty. In my ignorance. Not 
meaning it ! ” 

“ Lastly and most of all,” pursued the Bell. Who turns 
his back upon the fallen and disfigured of his kind ; abandons 
them as Vile; and does not trace and track with pitying eyes 
the unfenced precipice by which they fell from Good — grasping 
in their fall some tufts and shreds of that lost soil, and clinging 
to them still when bruised and dying in the gulf below ; does 
wrong to Heaven and Man, to Time and to Eternity. And 
you have done that wrong ! ” 

Spare me,” cried Trotty, falling on his knees ; “ for Mercy’s 
sake!” 

Listen ! ” said the Shadow. 

Listen ! ” cried the other Shadows. 

Listen!” said a clear and childlike voice, which Trotty 
thought he recognised as having heard before. 

The organ sounded faintly in the church below. Swelling 
by degrees, the melody ascended to the roof, and filled the 
choir and nave. Expanding more and more, it rose up, up; 
up, up; higher, higher, higher up; awakening agitated hearts 


128 


THE CHIMES 


within the bulky piles of oak, the hollow bells, the iron-bound 
doors, the stairs of solid stone; until the tower walls were 
insufficient to contain it, and it soared into the sky. 

No wonder that an old man’s breast could not contain a 
sound so vast and mighty. It broke from that weak prison in 
a rush of tears; and Trotty put his hands before his face. 

Listen ! ” said the Shadow. 

** Listen ! ” said the other Shadows. 

‘‘ Listen ! ” said the child’s voice. 

A solemn strain of blended voices rose into the tower. 

It was a very low and mournful strain : a Dirge : and as he 
listened, Trotty heard his child among the singers. 

She is dead ! ” exclaimed the old man. Meg is dead ! 
Her Spirit calls to me. I hear it ! ” 

‘‘ The Spirit of your child bewails the dead, and mingles 
with the dead — dead hopes, dead fancies, dead imaginings of 
youth,” returned the Bell, “ but she is living. Learn from her 
life, a living truth. Learn from the creature dearest to your 
heart, how bad the Bad are born. See every bud and leaf 
plucked one by one from off the fairest stem, and know 
how bare and wretched it may be. Follow her ! To despera- 
tion!” 

Each of the shadowy figures stretched its right arm forth, 
and pointed downward. 

The Spirit of the Chimes is your companion,” said the 
figure. '' Go ! It stands behind you ! ” 

Trotty turned, and saw — the child! The child Will Fern 
had carried in the street; the child whom Meg had watched, 
but now, asleep ! 

‘‘ I carried her myself, to-night,” said Trotty. ‘‘ In these 
arms ! ” 

“ Show him what he calls himself,” said the dark figures, 
one and all. 

The tower opened at his feet. He looked down, and beheld 
his own form, lying at the bottom, on the outside : crushed and 
motionless. 

‘‘ No more a living man ! ” cried Trotty. Dead ! ” 

Dead ! ” said the figures all together. 

Gracious Heaven ! And the New Year — ” 

“ Past,” said the figures. 


THE CHIMES 


129 

“ What ! ’’ he cried, shuddering. “ I missed my way, and 
coming on the outside of this tower in the dark, fell down — a 
year ago ? ’’ 

Nine years ago! ’’ replied the figures. 

As they gave the answer, they recalled their outstretched 
hands ; and where their figures had been, there the Bells were. 

And they rang; their time being come again. And once 
again, vast multitudes of phantoms sprang into existence ; once 
again, were incoherently engaged, as they had been before; 
once again, faded on the stopping of the chimes ; and dwindled 
into nothing. 

‘‘ What are these? ” he asked his guide. If I am not mad, 
what are these ? ’’ 

‘‘ Spirits of the Bells. Their sound upon the air,'’ returned 
the child. “ They take such shapes and occupations as the 
hopes and thoughts of mortals, and the recollections they have 
stored up, give them.” 

And you,” said Trotty wildly. ** What are you? ” 

“ Hush, hush ! ” returned the child. Look here ! ” 

In a poor, mean room: working at the same kind of em- 
broidery which he had often, often seen before her; Meg, his 
own dear daughter, was presented to his view. He made no 
effort to imprint his kisses on her face; he did not strive to 
clasp her to his loving heart; he knew that such endearments 
were for him no more. But he held his trembling breath ; and 
brushed away the blinding tears, that he might look upon her ; 
that he might only see her. 

Ah ! Changed. Changed. The light of the clear eye, how 
dimmed. The bloom, how faded from the cheek. Beautiful 
she was, as she had ever been, but Hope, Hope, Hope, oh 
where was the fresh Hope that had spoken to him like a voice ! 

She looked up from her work, at a companion. Following 
her eyes, the old man started back. 

In the woman grown, he recognised her at a glance. In the 
long silken hair, he saw the self-same curls; around the lips, 
the child’s expression lingering still. See! In the eyes, now 
turned inquiringly on Meg, there shone the very look that 
scanned those features when he brought her home ! 

Then what was this, beside him ! 

Looking with awe into its face, he saw a something reigning 


THE CHIMES 


130 

there : a lofty something, undefined and indistinct, which made 
it hardly more than a remembrance of that child — as yonder 
figure might be — yet it was the same : the same : and wore the 
dress. 

Hark. They were speaking! 

“ Meg/’ said Lilian, hesitating. '' How often you raise your 
head from your work to look at me I ” 

“ Are my looks so altered, that they frighten you ? ” asked 
Meg. 

“ Nay, dear ! But you smile at that, yourself ! Why not 
smile, when you look at me, Meg? ” 

“ I do so. Do I not ? ” she answered : smiling on her. 

“ Now you do,” said Lilian, “ but not usually. When you 
think I’m busy, and don’t see you, you look so anxious and so 
doubtful, that I hardly like to raise my eyes. There is little 
cause for smiling in this hard and toilsome life, but you were 
once so cheerful.” 

“ Am I not now 1 ” cried Meg, speaking in a tone of strange 
alarm, and rising to embrace her. Do I make our weary 
life more weary to you, Lilian 1 ” 

You have been the only thing that made it life,” said 
Lilian, fervently kissing her ; “ sometimes the only thing that 
made me care to live so, Meg. Such work, such work! So 
many hours, so many days, so many long, long nights of hope- 
less, cheerless, never-ending work — ^not to heap up riches, not 
to live grandly or gaily, not to live upon enough, however 
coarse; but to earn bare bread; to scrape together just enough 
to toil upon, and want upon, and keep alive in us the con- 
sciousness of our hard fate ! Oh, Meg, Meg ! ” she raised her 
voice, and twined her arms about her as she spoke, like one 
in pain. How can the cruel world go round, and bear to 
look upon such lives ! ” 

“ Lilly ! ” said Meg, soothing her, and putting back her hair 
from her wet face. “Why, Lilly! You! So pretty and so 
young ! ” 

“ Oh, Meg ! ” she interrupted, holding her at arm’s-length, 
and looking in her face imploringly. “ The worst of all, the 
worst of all! Strike me old, Meg! Wither me and shrivel 
me, and free me from the dreadful thoughts that tempt me in 
my youth ! ” 


THE CHIMES 


131 

Trotty turned to look upon his guide. But the Spirit of 
the child had taken flight. Was gone. 

Neither did he himself remain in the same place; for Sir 
Joseph Bowley, Friend and Father of the Poor, held a great 
festivity at Bowley Hall, in honour of the natal day of Lady 
Bowley; and as Lady Bowley had been born on New Year’s 
Day (which the local newspapers considered an especial point- 
ing of the finger of Providence to number One, as Lady Bow- 
ley’s destined figure in Creation), it was on a New Year’s Day 
that this festivity took place. 

Bowley Hall was full of visitors. The red-faced gentleman 
was there, Mr. Filer was there, the great Alderman Cute was 
there — ^Alderman Cute had a sympathetic feeling with great 
people, and had considerably improved his acquaintance with 
Sir Joseph Bowley on the strength of his attentive letter : in- 
deed had become quite a friend of the family since then — and 
many guests were there. Tro tty’s ghost was there, wandering 
about, poor phantom, drearily ; and looking for its guide. 

There was to be a great dinner in the Great Hall. At which 
Sir Joseph Bowley, in his celebrated character of Friend and 
Father of the Poor, was to make his great speech. Certain 
plum-puddings were to be eaten by his Friends and Children 
in another Hall first; and, at a given signal, Friends and Chil- 
dren flocking in among their Friends and Fathers, were to 
form a family assemblage, with not one manly eye therein 
unmoistened by emotion. 

But there was more than this to happen. Even more than 
this. Sir Joseph Bowley, Baronet and Member of Parliament, 
was to play a match at skittles — real skittles — with his tenants. 

Which quite reminds one,” said Alderman Cute, “ of the 
days of old King Hal, stout King Hal, bluff King Hal. Ah. 
Fine character ! ” 

Very,” said Mr. Filer, dryly. For marrying women and 
murdering ’em. Considerably more than the average number 
of wives by the bye.” 

You’ll marry the beautiful ladies, and not murder ’em, eh? ” 
said Alderman Cute to the heir of Bowley, aged twelve. 
“ Sweet boy ! We shall have this little gentleman in Parlia- 
ment now,” said the Alderman, holding him by the shoulders, 
and looking as reflective as he could, before we know where 


THE CHIMES 


132 

we are. We shall hear of his successes at the poll ; his speeches 
in the House; his overtures from Governments; his brilliant 
achievements of all kinds; ah! we shall make our little ora- 
tions about him in the Common Council, I’ll be bound ; before 
we have time to look about us 1 ” 

Oh, the difference of shoes and stockings ! ” Trotty thought. 
But his heart yearned towards the child, for the love of those 
same shoeless and stockingless boys, predestined (by the Aider- 
man) to turn out bad, who might have been the children of 
poor Meg. 

‘‘ Richard,” moaned Trotty, roaming among the company, 
to and fro ; ‘‘ where is he ? I can’t find Richard ! Where is 
Richard?” 

Not likely to be there, if still alive I But Trotty ’s grief and 
solitude confused him ; and he still went wondering among the 
gallant company, looking for his guide, and saying, “ Where 
is Richard ? Show me Richard ! ” 

He was wondering thus, when he encountered Mr. Fish, 
the confidential Secretary : in great agitation. 

Bless my heart and soul 1 ” cried Mr. Fish. “ Where’s 
Alderman Cute ? Has anybody seen the Alderman ? ” 

Seen the Alderman ? Oh dear 1 Who could ever help see- 
ing the Alderman ? He was so considerate, so affable ; he bore 
so much in mind the natural desire of folks to see him ; that if 
he had a fault, it was the being constantly On View. And 
wherever the great people were, there, to be sure, attracted by 
the kindred sympathy between great souls, was Cute. 

Several voices cried that he was in the circle round Sir 
Joseph. Mr. Fish made way there; found him; and took him 
secretly into a window near at hand. Trotty joined them. 
Not of his own accord. He felt that his steps were led in 
that direction. 

“ My dear Alderman Cute,” said Mr. Fish. ‘‘ A little more 
this way. The most dreadful circumstance has occurred. I 
have this moment received the intelligence. I think it will be 
best not to acquaint Sir Joseph with it till the day is over. You 
understand Sir Joseph, and will give me your opinion. The 
most frightful and deplorable event ! ” 

“ Fish ! ” returned the Alderman. “ Fish ! My good fellow. 


THE CHIMES 


133 

what is the matter? Nothing revolutionary, I hope! No — no 
attempted interference with the magistrates ? ’’ 

“ Deedles, the banker,” gasped the Secretary. “ Deedles 
Brothers — who was to have been here to-day — high in office in 
the Goldsmiths’ Company — ” 

“ Not stopped I ” exclaimed the Alderman. '' It can’t be ! ” 
Shot himself.” 

Good God 1 ” 

Put a double-barrelled pistol to his mouth, in his own 
counting-house,” said Mr. Fish, and blew his brains out. No 
motive. Princely circumstances 1 ” 

“ Circumstances ! ” exclaimed the Alderman. A man of 
noble fortune. One of the most respectable of men. Suicide, 
Mr. Fish ! By his own hand I ” 

This very morning,” returned Mr. Fish. 

“ Oh, the brain, the brain ! ” exclaimed the pious Alderman, 
lifting up his hands. Oh, the nerves, the nerves; the mys- 
teries of this machine called Man! Oh, the little that un- 
hinges it: poor creatures that we are! Perhaps a dinner, 
Mr. Fish. Perhaps the conduct of his son, who, I have 
heard, ran very wild, and was in the habit of drawing bills 
upon him without the least authority! A most respectable 
man. One of the most respectable men I ever knew! A 
lamentable instance, Mr. Fish. A public [calamity! I shall 
make a point of wearing the deepest mourning. A most re- 
spectable man! But there is One above. We must submit, 
Mr. Fish. We must submit ! ” 

What, Alderman! No word of Putting Down? Remem- 
ber, Justice, your high moral boast and pride. Come, Aider- 
man! Balance those scales. Throw me into this, the empty 
one. No Dinner, and Nature’s founts in some poor woman, 
dried by starving misery and rendered obdurate to claims for 
which her offspring has authority in holy mother Eve. Weigh 
me the two, you Daniel going to judgment, when your day 
shall come! Weigh them, in the eyes of suffering thousands, 
audience (not unmindful) of the grim farce you play! Or 
supposing that you strayed from your five wits — it’s not so far 
to go, but that it might be — and laid hands upon that throat 
of yours, warning your fellows (if you have a fellow) how they 


134 the chimes 

croak their comfortable wickedness to raving heads and stricken 
hearts. What then? 

The words rose up in Trotty’s breast, as if they had been 
spoken by some other voice within him. Alderman Cute 
pledged himself to Mr. Fish that he would assist him in break- 
ing the melancholy catastrophe to Sir Joseph, when the day 
was over. Then, before they parted, wringing Mr. Fish’s hand 
in bitterness of soul, he said, “ The most respectable of men ! ” 
And added that he hardly knew : not even he : why such afflic- 
tions were allowed on earth. 

“ It’s almost enough to make one think, if one didn’t know 
better,” said Alderman Cute, that at times some motion of a 
capsizing nature was going on in things, which affected the 
general economy of the social fabric. Deedles Brothers ! ” 

The skittle-playing came off with immense success. Sir 
Joseph knocked the pins about quite skilfully; Master Bowley 
took an innings at a shorter distance also ; and everybody said 
that now, when a Baronet and the Son of a Baronet played at 
skittles, the country was coming round again, as fast as it could 
come. 

At its proper time, the Banquet was served up. Trotty in- 
voluntarily repaired to the Hall with the rest, for he felt him- 
self conducted thither by some stronger impulse than his own 
free will. The sight was gay in the extreme; the ladies were 
very handsome; the visitors delighted, cheerful, and good- 
tempered. When the lower doors were opened, and the people 
flocked in, in their rustic dresses, the beauty of the spectacle 
was at its height; but Trotty only murmured more and more, 
“ Where is Richard ! He should help and comfort her ! I 
can’t see Richard ! ” 

There had been some speeches made; and Lady Bowley’s 
health had been proposed ; and Sir Joseph Bowley had returned 
thanks; and had made his great speech, showing by various 
pieces of evidence that he was the born Friend and Father, and 
so forth; and had given as a Toast, his Friends and Children, 
and the Dignity of Labour; when a slight disturbance at the 
bottom of the Hall attracted Toby’s notice. After some con- 
fusion, noise, and opposition, one man broke through the rest, 
and stood forward by himself. 

Not Richard. No. But one whom he had thought of, and 


THE CHIMES 


135 

had looked for, many times. In a scantier supply of light, he 
might have doubted the identity of that worn man, so old, and 
grey, and bent; but with a blaze of lamps upon his gnarled 
and knotted head, he knew Will Fern as soon as he stepped 
forth. 

What is this ! ” exclaimed Sir Joseph, rising. ‘‘ Who gave 
this man admittance? This is a criminal from prison! Mr. 
Fish, Sir, will you have the goodness — 

‘‘ A minute ! ” said Will Fern. “ A minute ! My Lady, you 
was born on this day along with a New Year Get me a 
minute’s leave to speak.” 

She made some intercession for him. Sir Joseph took his 
seat again, with native dignity. 

The ragged visitor — for he was miserably dressed — looked 
round upon the company, and made his homage to them with a 
humble bow. 

“ Gentlefolks ! ” he said. You’ve drunk the Labourer. 
Look at me ! ” 

“ Just come from jail,” said Mr. Fish. 

“ Just come from jail,” said Will. And neither for the 
first time, nor the second, nor the third, nor yet the fourth.” 

Mr. Filer was heard to remark testily, that four times was 
over the average ; and he ought to be ashamed of himself. 

Gentlefolks 1 ” repeated Will Fern. Look at me! You 
see I’m at the worst. Beyond all hurt or harm ; beyond your 
help ; for the time when your kind words or kind actions could 
have done me good,” — he struck his hand upon his breast, and 
shook his head, “ is gone, with the scent of last year’s beans 
or clover on the air. Let me say a word for these,” pointing 
to the labouring people in the Hall ; and when you’re met 
together, hear the real Truth spoke out for once.” 

‘‘ There’s not a man here,” said the host, “ who would have 
him for a spokesman.” 

‘‘ Like enough, Sir Joseph. I believe it. Not the less true, 
perhaps, is what I say. Perhaps that’s a proof on it. Gentle- 
folks, I’ve lived many a year in this place. You may see the 
cottage from the sunk fence over yonder. I’ve seen the ladies 
draw it in their books, a hundred times. It looks well in a 
picter. I’ve heerd say; but there an’t weather in picters, and 
mayb^ ’tj§ fitter for that, than for a place to live in. Well ! I 


THE CHIMES 


136 

lived there. How hard — how bitter hard, I lived there, I won't 
say. Any day in the year, and every day, you can judge for 
your own selves." 

He spoke as he had spoken on the night when Trotty found 
him in the street. His voice was deeper and more husky, and 
had a trembling in it now and then; but he never raised it 
passionately, and seldom lifted it above the firm stern level of 
the homely facts he stated. 

“ 'Tis harder than you think for, gentlefolks, to grow up 
decent : commonly decent : in such a place. That I growed up 
a man and not a brute, says something for me — as I was then. 
As I am now, there’s nothing can be said for me or done for 
me. I’m past it." 

“ I am glad this man has entered," observed Sir Joseph, look- 
ing round serenely. Don’t disturb him. It appears to be 
Ordained. He is an Example : a living example. I hope and 
trust, and confidently expect, that it will not be lost upon my 
Friends here." 

“ I dragged on," said Fern, after a moment’s silence. 
“ Somehow. Neither me nor any other man knows how; but 
so heavy, that I couldn’t put a cheerful face upon it, or make 
believe that I was anything but what I was. Now, gentlemen 
— you gentlemen that sits at Sessions — when you see a man 
with discontent writ on his face, you says to one another, ‘ He’s 
suspicious. I has my doubts,’ says you, ‘ about Will Fern. 
Watch that fellow ! ’ I don’t say, gentlemen, it an’t quite 
nat’ral, but I say ’tis so; and from that hour, whatever Will 
Fern does, or lets alone — all one — it goes against him." 

Alderman Cute stuck his thumbs in his waistcoat-pockets, 
and leaned back in his chair, and smiling, winked at a neigh- 
bouring chandelier. As much as to say, Of course! I told 
you so. The common cry ! Lord bless you, we are up to all 
this sort of thing — myself and human nature." 

Now, gentlemen," said Will Fern, holding out his hands, 
and flushing for an instant in his haggard face, “ see how your 
laws are made to trap and hunt us when we’re brought to this. 
I tries to live elsewhere. And I’m a vagabond. To jail with 
him 1 I comes back here. I goes a-nutting in your woods, and 
breaks — who don’t? — a limber branch or two. To jail with 
him ! One of your keepers sees me in the broad day, near my 


THE CHIMES 


137 

own patch of garden, with a gun. To jail with him! I has 
a nat’ral angry word with that man, when I’m free again. To 
jail with him! I cuts a stick. To jail with him! I eats a 
rotten apple or a turnip. To jail with him! It’s twenty mile 
away; and coming back, I begs a trifle on the road. To jail 
with him ! At last, the constable, the keeper — anybody — finds 
me anywhere, a-doing anything. To jail with him, for he’s a 
vagrant, and a jail-bjrd known; and the jail’s the only home 
he’s got.” 

The Alderman nodded sagaciously, as who should say, “ A 
very good home too ! ” 

“ Do I say this to serve my cause ! ” cried Fern. “ Who can 
give me back my liberty, who can give me back my good name, 
who can give me back my innocent niece? Not all the Lords 
and Ladies in wide England. But, gentlemen, gentlemen, 
dealing with other men like me, begin at the right end. Give 
us, in mercy, better homes when we’re a-lying in our cradles ; 
give us better food when we’re a-working for our lives; give 
us kinder laws to bring us back when we’re a-going wrong; 
and don’t set Jail, Jail, Jail, afore us, everywhere we turn. 
There an’t a condescension you can show the Labourer then, 
that he won’t take, as ready and as grateful as a man can be ; 
for, he has a patient, peaceful, willing heart. But you must 
put his rightful spirit in him first; for, whether he’s a wreck 
and ruin such as me, or like one of them that stand here now, 
his spirit is divided from you at this time. Bring it back, 
gentlefolks, bring it back! Bring it back, afore the day 
comes when even his Bible changes in his altered mind, and 
the words seem to him to read, as they have sometimes read 
in my eyes — in Jail: ‘Whither thou goest, I can Not go; 
where thou lodgest, I do Not lodge; thy people are Not my 
people; Nor thy God my God!’” 

A sudden stir and agitation took place in the Hall. Trotty 
thought at first, that several had risen to eject the man; and 
hence this change in its appearance. But another moment 
showed him that the room and all the company had vanished 
from his sight, and that his daughter was again before him, 
seated at her work. But in a poorer, meaner garret than be- 
fore ; and with no Lilian by her side. 

The frame at which she had worked, was put away upon a 


THE CHIMES 


138 

shelf and covered up. The chair in which she had sat, was 
turned against the wall. A history was written in these little 
things, and in Meg’s grief-worn face. Oh ! who could fail to 
read it ! 

Meg strained her eyes upon her work until it was too dark 
to see the threads; and when the night closed in, she lighted 
her feeble candle and worked on. Still her old father was in- 
visible about her; looking down upon her; loving her — how 
dearly loving her ! — and talking to her in a tender voice about 
the old times, and the Bells. Though he knew, poor Trotty, 
though he knew she could not hear him. 

A great part of the evening had worn away, when a knock 
came at her door. She opened it. A man was on the thresh- 
old. A slouching, moody, drunken sloven: wasted by intem- 
perance and vice : and with his matted hair and unshorn beard 
in wild disorder: but with some traces on him, too, of hav- 
ing been a man of good proportion and good features in his 
youth. 

He stopped until he had her leave to enter ; and she, retiring 
a pace or two from the open door, silently and sorrowfully 
looked upon him. Trotty had his wish. He saw Richard. 

'' May I come in, Margaret ? ” 

“ Yes ! Come in. Come in ! ” 

It was well that Trotty knew him before he spoke; for with 
any doubt remaining on his mind, the harsh discordant voice 
would have persuaded him that it was not Richard but some 
other man. 

There were but two chairs in the room. She gave him hers, 
and stood at some short distance from him, waiting to hear 
what he had to say. 

He sat, however, staring vacantly at the floor ; with a lustre- 
less and stupid smile. A spectacle of such deep degradation, 
of such abject hopelessness, of such a miserable downfall, that 
she put her hands before her face and turned away, lest he 
should see how much it moved her. 

Roused by the rustling of her dress, or some such trifling 
sound, he lifted his head, and began to speak as if there had 
been no pause since he entered. 

Still at work, Margaret? You work late.” 

“ I generally do.” 


THE CHIMES 


139 


“ And early 

‘‘ And early.” 

So she said. She said you never tired ; or never owned 
that you tired. Not all the time you lived together. Nor even 
when you fainted, between work and fasting. But I told you 
that, the last time I came.” 

“ You did,” she answered. “ And I implored you to tell me 
nothing more; and you made me a solemn promise, Richard, 
that you never would.” 

“ A solemn promise,” he repeated, with a drivelling laugh 
and vacant stare. '' A solemn promise. To be sure. A sol- 
emn promise ! ” Awakening, as it were, after a time ; in the 
same manner as before ; he said with a sudden animation. 

“ How can I help it, Margaret ? What am I to do ? She has 
been to me again ! ” 

“ Again ! ” cried Meg, clasping her hands. Oh, does she 
think of me so often ! Has she been again ! ” 

‘‘Twenty times again,” said Richard. “Margaret, she 
haunts me. She comes behind me in the street, and thrusts it 
in my hand. I hear her foot upon the ashes when Tm at my 
work (ah, ha! that an’t often), and before I can turn my head, 
her voice is in my ear, saying, ‘ Richard, don’t look round. For 
Heaven’s love, give her this ! ’ She brings it where I live ; she 
sends it in letters ; she taps at the window and lays it on the sill. 
What can I do ? Look at it I ” 

He held out in his hand a little purse, and chinked the money 
it enclosed. 

“ Hide it,” said Meg. “ Hide it ! When she comes again, 
tell her, Richard, that I love her in my soul. That I never lie 
down to sleep, but I bless her, and pray for her. That, in my 
solitary work, I never cease to have her in my thoughts. That 
she is with me, night and day. That if I died to-morrow, I 
would remember her with my last breath. But that I cannot 
look upon it I ” 

He slowly recalled his hand, and crushing the purse together, 
said with a kind of drowsy thoughtfulness : 

“ I told her so. I told her so, as plain as words could speak. 
I’ve taken this gift back and left it at her door, a dozen times 
since then. But when she came at last, and stood before me, 
face to face, what could I do ? ” 


THE CHIMES 


140 

“You saw her!’’ exclaimed Meg. “You saw her! Oh, 
Lilian, my sweet girl ! Oh, Lilian, Lilian ! ” 

“ I saw her,” he went on to say, not answering, but engaged 
in the same slow pursuit of his own thoughts. “There she 
stood : trembling ! ‘ How does she look, Richard ? Does she 
ever speak of me? Is she thinner? My old place at the 
table: what’s in my old place? And the frame she taught 
me our old work on — has she burnt it, Richard ! ’ There 
she was. I heard her say it.” 

Meg checked her sobs, and with the tears streaming from 
her eyes, bent over him to listen. Not to lose a breath. 

With his arms resting on his knees; and stooping forward 
in his chair, as if what he said were written on the ground in 
some half legible character, which it was his occupation to 
decipher and connect ; he went on. 

“ ‘ Richard, I have fallen very low ; and you may guess how 
much I have suffered in having this sent back, when I can bear 
to bring it in my hand to you. But you loved her once, even 
in my memory, dearly. Others stepped in between you ; fears, 
and jealousies, and doubts, and vanities, estranged you from 
her ; but you did love her, even in my memory ! ’ I suppose I 
did,” he said, interrupting himself for a moment. “ I did ! 
That’s neither here nor there. * O Richard, if you ever did ; 
if you have any memory for what is gone and lost, take it to 
her once more. Once more! Tell her how I begged and 
prayed. Tell her how I laid my head upon your shoulder, 
where her own head might have lain, and was so humble to 
you, Richard. Tell her that you looked into my face, and saw 
the beauty which she used to praise, all gone : all gone : and in 
its place, a poor, wan, hollow cheek, that she would weep to 
see. Tell her everything, and take it back, and she will not 
refuse again. She will not have the heart ! ’ ” 

So he sat musing, and repeating the last words, until he woke 
again, and rose. 

“You won’t take it, Margaret?” 

She shook her head, and motioned an entreaty to him to 
leave her. 

“ Good night, Margaret.” 

“ Good night ! ” 

He turned to look upon her; struck by her sorrow, and 



copyright, 1913, BY FREDERICK A. STOKES COMPANY 

“‘TO A CRICKET ON THE IllCARTlI. IS Tlll^ LIXKIEST THING 

IN ALL THE WORLD 77.,’ 



©CIK (i4250 


THE CHIMES 141 

perhaps by the pity for himself which trembled in her voice. 
It was a quick and rapid action; and for the moment some 
flash of his old bearing kindled in his form. In the next 
he went as he had come. Nor did this glimmer of a quenched 
fire seem to light him to a quicker sense of his debasement. 

In any mood, in any grief, in any torture of the mind or 
body, Meg’s work must be done. She sat down to her task, 
and plied it. Night, midnight. Still she worked. 

She had a meagre fire, the night being very cold ; and rose 
at intervals to mind it. The Chimes rang half-past twelve 
while she was thus engaged; and when they ceased she heard 
a gentle knocking at the door. Before she could so much 
as wonder who was there, at that unusual hour, it opened. 

O Youth and Beauty, happy as ye should be, look at this! 
O Youth and Beauty, blest and blessing all within your 
reach, and working out the ends of your Beneficent Creator, 
look at this ! 

She saw the entering figure; screamed its name; cried 
Lilian!” 

It was swift, and fell upon its knees before her: clinging 
to her dress. 

“ Up, dear ! Up ! Lilian ! My own dearest ! ” 

‘‘Never more, Meg; never more! Here! Here! Close 
to you, holding to you, feeling your dear breath upon my 
face!” 

“ Sweet Lilian ! Darling Lilian ! Child of my heart — no 
mother’s love can be more tender — lay your head upon my 
breast ! ” 

“Never more, Meg. Never more! When I first looked 
into your face, you knelt before me. On my knees before 
you, let me die. Let it be here ! ” 

“You have come back. My Treasure! We will live to- 
gether, work together, hope together, die together ! ” 

“ Ah ! Kiss my lips, Meg ; fold your arms about me ; 
press me to your bosom ; look kindly on me ; but don’t raise 
me. Let it be here. Let me see the last of your dear face 
upon my knees ! ” 

O Youth and Beauty, happy as ye should be, look at this! 
O Youth and Beauty, working out the ends of your Beneficent 
Creator, look at this! 


THE CHIMES 


142 

“Forgive me, Meg! So dear, so dear! Forgive me! I 
know you do, I see you do, but say so, Meg ! ” 

She said so, with her lips on Lilian’s cheek. And with 
her arms twined round — she knew it now — ;a broken heart. 

“ His blessing on you, dearest love. Kiss me once more ! 
He suffered her to sit beside His feet, and dry them with 
her hair. Oh, Meg, what Mercy and Compassion ! ” 

As she died, the Spirit of the child returning, innocent and 
radiant, touched the old man with its hand, and beckoned 
him away. 


FOURTH QUARTER 

S OME new remembrance of the ghostly figures in the 
Bell ; some faint impression of the ringing of the Chimes ; 
some giddy consciousness of having seen the swarm of 
phantoms reproduced and reproduced until the recollection 
of them lost itself in the confusion of their numbers; some 
hurried knowledge, how conveyed to him he knew not, that 
more years had passed; and Trotty, with the Spirit of the 
child attending him, stood looking on at mortal company. 

Fast company, rosy-cheeked company, comfortable com- 
pany. They were but two, but they were red enough for 
ten. They sat before a bright fire with a small low table 
between them; and unless the fragrance of hot tea and muf- 
fins lingered longer in that room than in most others, the 
table had seen service very lately. But all the cups and 
saucers being clean, and in their proper places in the corner 
cupboard; and the brass toasting-fork hanging in its usual 
nook, and spreading its four idle fingers out, as if it wanted 
to be measured for a glove ; there remained no other visible 
tokens of the meal just finished, than such as purred and 
washed their whiskers in the person of the basking cat, and 
glistened in the gracious, not to say the greasy, faces of her 
patrons. 

This cosy couple (married, evidently) had made a fair 
division of the fire between them, and sat looking at the 
glowing sparks that dropped into the grate; now nodding off 
into a doze; now waking up again when some hot fragment, 


THE CHIMES 


143 

larger than the rest, came rattling down, as if the fire were 
coming with it. 

It was in no danger of sudden extinction, however; for it 
gleamed not only in the little room, and on the panes of win- 
dow-glass in the door, and on the curtain half drawn across 

them, but in the little shop beyond. A little shop, quite 
crammed and choked with the abundance of its stock; a 
perfectly voracious little shop, with a maw as accommodating 
and full as any shark’s. Cheese, butter, firewood, soap, 
pickles, matches, bacon, table-beer, peg-tops, sweetmeats, 
boys’ kites, bird-seed, cold ham, birch brooms, hearth-stones, 
salt, vinegar, blacking, red-herrings, stationery, lard, mush- 
room-ketchup, staylaces, loaves of bread, shuttlecocks, eggs, 
and slate-pencils: everything was fish that came to the net of 
this greedy little shop, and all these articles were in its net. 
How many other kinds of petty merchandise were there, it 
would be difficult to say; but balls of packthread, ropes of 
onions, pounds of candles, cabbage-nets, and brushes, hung in 
bunches from the ceiling, like extraordinary fruit ; while va- 
rious odd canisters emitting aromatic smells, established the 
veracity of the inscription over the outer door, which in- 
formed the public that the keeper of this little shop was a 
licensed dealer in tea, coffee, tobacco, pepper, and snuff. 

Glancing at such of these articles as were visible in the 
shining of the blaze, and the less cheerful radiance of two 
smoky lamps which burnt but dimly in the shop itself, as 
though its plethora sat heavy on their lungs; and glancing, 

then, at one of the two faces by the parlour-fire; Trotty 
had small difficulty in recognising in the stout old lady, Mrs. 
Chickenstalker : always inclined to corpulency, even in the 
days when he had known her as established in the general 
line, and having a small balance against him in her books. 

The features of her companion were less easy to him. The 
great broad chin, with creases in it large enough to hide 
a finger in; the astonished eyes, that seemed to expostulate 
with themselves for sinking deeper and deeper into the yield- 
ing fat of the soft face; the nose afflicted with that dis- 
ordered action of its functions which is generally termed 
The Snuffles ; the short thick throat and labouring chest, with 
other beauties of the like description; though calculated to 


THE CHIMES 


144 

impress the memory, Trotty could at first allot to nobody he 
had ever known: and yet he had some recollection of them 
too. At length, in Mrs. Chickenstalker’s partner in the gen- 
eral line, and in the crooked and eccentric line of life, he 
recognised the former porter of Sir Joseph Bowley; an apo- 
plectic innocent, who had connected himself in Trotty’s mind 
with Mrs. Chickenstalker years ago, by giving him admis- 
sion to the mansion where he had confessed his obligations 
to that lady, and drawn on his unlucky head such grave re- 
proach. 

Trotty had little interest in a change like this, after the 
changes he had seen; but association is very strong some- 
times: and he looked involuntarily behind the parlour-door, 
where the accounts of credit customers were usually kept 
in chalk. There was no record of his name. Some names 
were there, but they were strange to him, and infinitely fewer 
than of old; from which he augured that the porter was an 
advocate of ready money transactions, and on coming into 
the business had looked pretty sharp after the Chickenstalker 
defaulters. 

So desolate was Trotty, and so mournful for the youth 
and promise of his blighted child, that it was a sorrow to 
him, even to have no place in Mrs. Chickenstalker’s ledger. 

“ What sort of night is it, Anne ? ” inquired the former 
porter of Sir Joseph Bowley, stretching out his legs before 
the fire, and rubbing as much of them as his short arms 
could reach : with an air that added, “ Here I am if it’s bad, 
and I don’t want to go out if it’s good.” 

“ Blowing and sleeting hard,” returned his wife ; “ and 
threatening snow. Dark. And very cold.” 

I’m glad to think we had muffins,” said the former porter, 
in the tone of one who had set his conscience at rest. “ It’s 
a sort of night that’s meant for muffins. Likewise crumpets. 
Also Sally Lunns.” 

The former porter mentioned each successive kind of eat- 
able, as if he were musingly summing up his good actions. 
After which he rubbed his fat legs as before, and jerking 
them at the knees to get the fire upon the yet unroasted 
parts, laughed as if somebody had tickled him. 

‘‘You’re in spirits, Tugby, my dear,” observed his wife. 


THE CHIMES 


145 

The firm was Tugby, late Chickenstalker. 

“ No,” said Tugby. “ No. Not particular. I’m a little 
elewated. The muffins came so pat ! ” 

With that he chuckled until he was black in the face; and 
had so much ado to become any other colour, that his fat 
legs took the strangest excursions into the air. Nor were 
they reduced to anything like decorum until Mrs. Tugby 
had thumped him violently on the back, and shaken him as if he 
were a great bottle. 

“ Good gracious, goodness, lord-a-mercy bless and save the 
man!” cried Mrs. Tugby, in great terror. ‘‘What’s he do- 
ing?" 

Mr. Tugby wiped his eyes, and faintly repeated that he 
found himself a little elewated. 

“ Then don’t be so again, that’s a dear good soul,” said 
Mrs. Tugby, “ if you don’t want to frighten me to death, with 
your struggling and fighting 1 ” 

Mr. Tugby said he wouldn’t, but his whole existence was 
a fight; in which, if any judgment might be founded on the 
constantly-increasing shortness of his breath, and the deep- 
ening purple of his face, he was always getting the worst of 
it. 

“ So it’s blowing, and sleeting, and threatening snow ; and 
is dark, and very cold: is it, my dear?” said Mr. Tugby, 
looking at the fire, and reverting to the cream and marrow 
of his temporary elevation. 

“ Hard weather indeed,” returned his wife, shaking her 
head. 

“ Ay, ay ! Years,” said Mr. Tugby, “ are like Christians 
in that respect. Some of ’em die hard; some of ’em die 
easy. This one hasn’t many days to run, and is making a 
fight for it. I like him all the better. There’s a customer, 
my love ! ” 

Attentive to the rattling door, Mrs. Tugby had already 
risen. 

“Now then!” said that lady, passing out into the little 
shop. “ What’s wanted ? Oh ! I beg your pardon. Sir, I’m 
sure. I didn’t think it was you.” 

She made this apology to a gentleman in black, who, with 
his wristbands tucked up, and his hat cocked loungingly on 


THE CHIMES 


146 

one side, and his hands in his pockets, sat down astride on 
the table-beer barrel, and nodded in return. 

“ This is a bad business upstairs, Mrs. Tugby,’' said the 
gentleman. “ The man can’t live.” 

“ Not the back-attic can’t ! ” cried Tugby, coming out into 
the shop to join the conference. 

The back-attic, Mr. Tugby,” said the gentleman, “ is com- 
ing downstairs fast; and will be below the basement very 
soon.” 

Looking by turns at Tugby and his wife, he sounded the 
barrel with his knuckles for the depth of beer, and having 
found it, played a tune upon the empty part. 

“ The back-attic, Mr. Tugby,” said the gentleman ; Tugby 
having stood in silent consternation for some time ; is Go- 
ing.” 

“ Then,” said Tugby, turning to his wife, he must Go, 
you know, before he’s Gone.” 

I don’t think you can move him,” said the gentleman, 
shaking his head. I wouldn’t take the responsibility of say- 
ing it could be done myself. You had better leave him where 
he is. He can’t live long.” 

“ It’s the only subject,” said Tugby, bringing the butter- 
scale down upon the counter with a crash, by weighing his 
fist on it, that we’ve ever had a word upon ; she and me ; 
and look what it comes to! He’s going to die here, after 
all. Going to die upon the premises. Going to die in our 
house ! ” 

And where should he have died, Tugby?” cried his wife. 

In the workhouse,” he returned. What are workhouses 
made for? ” 

“ Not for that,” said Mrs. Tugby, with great energy. 
“ Not for that. Neither did I marry you for that. Don’t 
think it, Tugby. I won’t have it. I won’t allow it. I’d 
be separated first, and never see your face again. When 
my widow’s name stood over that door, as it did for many 
years: this house being known as Mrs. Chickenstalker’s far 
and wide, and never known but to its honest credit and its 
good report: when my widow’s name stood over that door, 
Tugby, I knew him as a handsome, steady, manly, inde- 
pendent youth; I knew her as the sweetest-looking, sweet- 


THE CHIMES 


147 

est-tempered girl, eyes ever saw; I knew her father (poor 
old creetur, he fell down from the steeple walking in his 
sleep, and killed himself), for the simplest, hardest-working, 
childest-hearted man, that ever drew the breath of life; and 
when I turn them out of house and home, may angels turn 
me out of Heaven. As they would ! And serve me right ! ’’ 
Her old face, which had been a plump and dimpled one 
before the changes which had come to pass, seemed to shine 
out of her as she said these words; and when she dried her 
eyes, and shook her head and her handkerchief at Tugby, with 
an expression of firmness which it was quite clear was not 
to be easily resisted, Trotty said, “ Bless her ! Bless her ! ” 
Then he listened, with a panting heart, for what should 
follow. Knowing nothing yet, but that they spoke of Meg. 

If Tugby had been a little elevated in the parlour, he more 
than balanced that account by being not a little depressed in 
the shop, where he now stood staring at his wife, without at- 
tempting a reply; secretly conveying, however — either in a 
fit of abstraction or as a precautionary measure — all the 
money from the till into his own pockets, as he looked at her. 

The gentleman upon the table-beer cask, who appeared to 
be some authorised medical attendant upon the poor, was 
far too well accustomed, evidently, to little differences of 
opinion between a man and wife, to interpose any remark in 
this instance. He sat softly whistling, and turning little 
drops of beer out of the tap upon the ground, until there 
was a perfect calm: when he raised his head, and said to 
Mrs. Tugby, late Chickenstalker : 

“ There’s something interesting about the woman, even 
now. How did she come to marry him ? ” 

‘‘ Why that,” said Mrs. Tugby, taking a seat near him, 
is not the least cruel part of her story. Sir. You see they 
kept company, she and Richard, many years ago. When 
they were a young and beautiful couple, everything was 
settled, and they were to have been married on a New Year’s 
Day. But, somehow, Richard got it into his head, through 
what the gentlemen told him, that he might do better, and 
that he’d soon repent it, and that she wasn’t good enough 
for him, and that a young man of spirit had no business to 
be married. And the gentlemen frightened her, and made 


THE CHIMES 


148 

her melancholy, and timid of his deserting her, and of her 
children coming to the gallows, and of its being wicked to be 
man and wife, and a good deal more of it. And in short, 
they lingered, and their trust in one another was broken, 
and so at last was the match. But the fault was his. She 
would have married him. Sir, joyfully. I’ve seen her heart 
swell, many times afterwards, when he passed her in a proud 
and careless way; and never did a woman grieve more truly 
for a man, than she for Richard when he first went wrong.” 

“ Oh! he went wrong, did he? ” said the gentleman, pulling 
out the vent-peg of the table-beer, and trying to peep down 
into the barrel through the hole. 

''Well, Sir, I don’t know that he rightly understood him- 
self, you see. I think his mind was troubled by their having 
broke with one another; and that but for being ashamed be- 
fore the gentlemen, and perhaps for being uncertain too, how 
she might take it, he’d have gone through any suffering or 
trial to have had Meg’s promise and Meg’s hand again. 
That’s my belief. He never said so; more’s the pity! He 
took to drinking, idling, bad companions: all the fine re- 
sources that were to be so much better for him than the 
Home he might have had. He lost his looks, his character, 
his health, his strength, his friends, his work: everything!” 

" He didn’t lose everything, Mrs. Tugby,” returned the 
gentleman, "because he gained a wife; and I want to know 
how he gained her.” 

" I’m coming to it. Sir, in a moment. This went on for 
years and years ; he sinking lower and lower ; she enduring, 
poor thing, miseries enough to wear her life away. At last, 
he was so cast down, and cast out, that no one would employ 
or notice him; and doors were shut upon him, go where he 
would. Applying from place to place, and door to door; 
and coming for the hundredth time to one gentleman who 
had often and often tried him (he was a good workman to 
the very end) ; that gentleman, who knew his history, said, 
' I believe you are incorrigible ; there is only one person in 
the world who has a chance of reclaiming you; ask me to 
trust you no more, until she tries to do it.’ Something like 
that, in his anger and vexation.” 


THE CHIMES 


149 


** Ah ! said the gentleman. Well ? 

“Well, Sir, he went to her, and kneeled to her; said it 
was so; said it ever had been so; and made a prayer to her 
to save him.” 

“ And she — Don’t distress yourself, Mrs. Tugby.” 

“ She came to me that night to ask me about living here. 
‘ What he was once to me,’ she said, ' is buried in a grave ; 
side by side with what I was to him. But I have thought 

of this; and I will make the trial. In the hope of saving 

him; for the love of the light-hearted girl (you remember 
her) who was to have been married on a New Year’s Day; 
and for the love of her Richard.’ And she said he had 

come to her from Lilian, and Lilian had trusted to him, and 

she never could forget that. So they were married ; and when 
they came home here, and I saw them, I hoped that such 
prophecies as parted them when they were young, may not 
often fulfil themselves as they did in this case, or I wouldn’t 
be the makers of them for a Mine of Gold.” 

The gentleman got ofif the cask and stretched himself, ob- 
serving : 

“ I suppose he used her ill, as soon as they were mar- 
ried?” 

“ I don’t think he ever did that,” said Mrs. Tugby, shaking 
her head, and wiping her eyes. “ He went on better for a 
short time ; but, his habits were too old and strong to be got 
rid of; he soon fell back a little; and was falling fast back, 
when his illness came so strong upon him. I think he has 
always felt for her. I am sure he has. I have seen him, in 
his crying fits and tremblings, try to kiss her hand; and I 
have heard him call her ' Meg,’ and say it was her nineteenth 
birthday. There he has been lying now, these weeks and 
months. Between him and her baby, she has not been able 
to do her old work; and by not being able to be regular, she 
has lost it, even if she could have done it. How they have 
lived, I hardly know ! ” 

” I know,” muttered Mr. Tugby; looking at the till, and 
round the shop, and at his wife; and rolling his head with 
immense intelligence. “ Like Fighting Cocks ! ” 

He was interrupted by a cry — a sound of lamentation — 


THE CHIMES 


150 

from the upper story of the house. The gentleman moved 
hiyriedly to the door. 

My friend,” he said, looking back, “ you needn’t dis- 
cuss whether he shall be removed or not. He has spared 
you that trouble, I believe.” 

Saying so, he ran upstairs, followed by Mrs. Tugby; 
while Mr. Tugby panted and grumbled after them at leisure: 
being rendered more than commonly short-winded by the 
weight of the till, in which there had been an inconvenient 
quantity of copper. Trotty, with the child beside him, floated 
up the staircase like mere air. 

Follow her! Follow her! Follow her!” He heard the 
ghostly voices in the Bells repeat their words as he ascended. 

Learn it, from the creature dearest to your heart ! ” 

It was over. It was over. And this was she, her father’s 
pride and joy! This haggard, wretched woman, weeping 
by the bed, if it deserved that name, and pressing to her 
breast, and hanging down her head upon, an infant. Who 
can tell how spare, how sickly, and how poor an infant? 
Who can tell how dear! 

“Thank God!” cried Trotty, holding up his folded hands. 
“ Oh, God be thanked ! She loves her child ! ” 

The gentleman, not otherwise hard-hearted or indifferent 
to such scenes, than that he saw them every day, and knew 
that they were figures of no moment in the Filer sums — 
mere scratches in the working of these calculations — laid his 
hand upon the heart that beat no more, and listened for the 
breath, and said, “ His pain is over. It’s better as it is ! ” 
Mrs. Tugby tried to comfort her with kindness. Mr. Tugby 
tried philosophy. 

“ Come, come ! ” he said, with his hands in his pockets, 
“you mustn’t give way, you know. That won’t do. You 
must fight up. What would have become of me if I had 
given way when I was porter; and we had as many as six 
runaway carriage-doubles at our door in one night! But I 
fell back upon my strength of mind, and didn’t open it ! ” 
Again Trotty heard the voices, saying, “Follow her!” 
He turned towards his guide, and saw it rising from him, 
passing through the air. “ Follow her ! ” it said. And van- 
ished. 


THE CHIMES 


151 

He hovered round her; sat down at her feet; looked up 
into her face for one trace of her old self; listened for one 
note of her old pleasant voice. He flitted round the child: 
so wan, so prematurely old, so dreadful in its gravity, so 
plaintive in its feeble, mournful, miserable wail. He al- 
most worshipped it. He clung to it as her only safeguard; 
as the last unbroken link that bound her to endurance. He 
set his father’s hope and trust on the frail baby; watched 
her every look upon it as she held it in her arms; and cried 
a thousand times, She loves it ! God be thanked, she 
loves it ! ’’ 

He saw the woman tend her in the night; return to her 
when her grudging husband was asleep, and all was still; 
encourage her, shed tears with her, set nourishment before 
her. He saw the day come, and the night again; the day, 
the night; the time go by; the house of death relieved of 
death; the room left to herself and to the child; he heard 
it moan and cry; he saw it harass her, and tire her out, 
and when she slumbered in exhaustion, drag her back to 
consciousness, and hold her with its little hands upon the 
rack ; but she was constant to it, gentle with it, patient with it. 
Patient! Was its loving mother in her inmost heart and 
soul, and had its Being knitted up with hers as when she 
carried it unborn. 

All this time, she was in want; languishing away, in dire 
and pining want. With the baby in her arms, she wan- 
dered here and there, in quest of occupation ; and with its thin 
face lying in her lap, and looking up in hers, did any work for 
any wretched sum : a day and night of labour for as many far- 
things as there were figures on the dial. If she had quarrelled 
with it; if she had neglected it; if she had looked upon it 
with a moment’s hate; if, in the frenzy of an instant, she 
had struck it! No. His comfort was. She loved it al- 
ways. 

She told no one of her extremity, and wandered abroad 
in the day lest she should be questioned by her only friend: 
for any help she received from her hands, occasioned fresh 
disputes between the good woman and her husband; and it 
was new bitterness to be the daily cause of strife and dis- 
cord, where she owed so much. 


THE CHIMES 


152 

She loved it still. She loved it more and more. But a 
change fell on the aspect of her love. One night. 

She was singing faintly to it in its sleep, and walking to 
and fro to hush it, when her door was softly opened, and a 
man looked in. 

“ For the last time,'' he said. 

‘^William Fern!" 

“ For the last time." 

He listened like a man pursued : and spoke in whispers. 

‘‘ Margaret, my race is nearly run. I couldn’t finish it, 
without a parting word with you. Without one grateful 
word." 

What have you done ? " she asked : regarding him with 
terror. 

He looked at her, but gave no answer. 

After a short silence, he made a gesture with his hand, 
as if he set her question by; as if he brushed it aside; and 
said. 

It's long ago, Margaret, now : but that night is as fresh 
in my memory as ever 'twas. We little thought, then," he 
added, looking round, that we should ever meet like this. 
Your child, Margaret? Let me have it in my arms. Let 
me hold your child." 

He put his hat upon the floor, and took it. And he trem- 
bled, as he took it, from head to foot. 

‘Hs it a girl?" 

Yes." 

He put his hand before its little face. 

“ See how weak I'm grown, Margaret, when I want the 
courage to look at it! Let her be a moment. I won't hurt 
her. It's long ago, but — What's her name ? " 

Margaret," she answered, quickly. 

'' I'm glad of that," he said. I’m glad of that." 

He seemed to breathe more freely; and after pausing for 
an instant, took away his hand, and looked upon the in- 
fant’s face. But covered it again, immediately. 

“ Margaret ! " he said ; and gave her back the child. “ It’s 
Lilian’s.” 

‘‘Lilian's!" < 


THE CHIMES 


153 

“ I held the same face in my arms when Lilian’s mother 
died and left her.” 

'' When Lilian’s mother died and left her ! ” she repeated, 
wildly. 

“ How shrill you speak ! Why do you fix your eyes upon 
me so ? Margaret ! ” 

She sank down in a chair, and pressed the infant to her 
breast, and wept over it. Sometimes, she released it from 
her embrace, to look anxiously in its face: then strained it 
to her bosom again. At those times: when she gazed upon 
it: then it was that something fierce and terrible began to 
mingle with her love. Then it was that her old father quailed. 

Follow her ! ” was sounded through the house. “ Learn 
it, from the creature dearest to your heart ! ” 

“ Margaret,” said Fern, bending over her, and kissing her 
upon the brow : I thank you for the last time. Good 
night. Good-bye. Put your hand in mine, and tell me you’ll 
forget me from this hour, and try to think the end of me 
was here.” 

What have you done ! ” she asked again. 

There’ll be a Fire to-night,” he said, removing from her. 
“ There’ll be Fires this winter-time, to light the dark nights. 
East, West, North, and South. When you see the distant 
sky red, they’ll be blazing. When you see the distant sky red, 
think of me no more ; or if you do, remember what a Hell was 
lighted up inside of me, and think you see its flames reflected 
in the clouds. Good night. Good-bye ! ” 

She called to him; but he was gone. She sat down stupe- 
fied, until her infant roused her to a sense of hunger, cold, 
and darkness. She paced the room with it the livelong 
night, hushing it and soothing it. She said at intervals, 
'' Like Lilian, when her mother died and left her ! ” Why 
was her step so quick, her eye so wild, her love so fierce and 
terrible, whenever she repeated those words? 

But it is Love,” said Trotty. ‘‘ It is Love. She’ll never 
cease to love it. My poor Meg ! ” 

She dressed the child next morning with unusual care — 
all vain expenditure of care upon such squalid robes! — and 
once more tried to find some means of life. It was the last 


THE CHIMES 


154 

day of the Old Year. She tried till night, and never broke 
her fast. She tried in vain. 

She mingled with an abject crowd, who tarried in the 
snow, until it pleased some officer appointed to dispense the 
public charity (the lawful charity; not that once, preached 
upon a Mount) to call them in, and question them, and say 
to this one, “ Go to such a place,” to that one, “ Come next 
week” ; to make a football of another wretch, and pass him 
here and there, from hand to hand, from house to house, 
until he wearied and lay down to die; or started up and 
robbed, and so became a higher sort of criminal, whose 
claims allowed of no delay. Here, too, she failed. 

She loved her child, and wished to have it lying on her 
breast. And that was quite enough. 

It was night: a bleak, dark, cutting night: when, pressing 
the child close to her for warmth, she arrived outside the 
house she called her home. She was so faint and giddy, 
that she saw no one standing in the doorway until she was 
close upon it, and about to enter. Then she recognised the 
master of the house, who had so disposed himself — with his 
person it was not difficult — as to fill up the whole entry. 

'"Oh!” he said, softly. ''You have come back?” 

She looked at the child, and shook her head. 

" Don’t you think you have lived here long enough with- 
out paying any rent? Don’t you think that, without any 
money, you’ve been a pretty constant customer at this shop, 
now ? ” said Mr. Tugby. 

She repeated the same mute appeal. 

" Suppose you try and deal somewhere, else,” he said. 
" And suppose you provide yourself with another lodging. 
Come ! Don’t you think you could manage it ? ” 

She said, in a low voice, that it was very late. To-mor- 
row. 

" Now I see what you want,” said Tugby ; " and what you 
mean. You know there are two parties in this house about 
you, and you delight in setting ’em by the ears. I don’t 
want any quarrels; I’m speaking softly to avoid a quarrel; 
but if you don’t go away. I’ll speak out loud, and you shall 
cause words high enough to please you. But you shan’t 
come in, That I am determined.” 


THE CHIMES 155 

She put her hair back with her hand, and looked in a sud- 
den manner at the sky, and the dark lowering distance. 

‘‘This is the last night of an Old Year: and I won’t carry 
ill-blood and quarrellings and disturbances into a New One, 
to please you nor anybody else,” said Tugby, who was quite 
a retail Friend and Father. “ I wonder you an’t ashamed 
of yourself, to carry such practices into a New Year. If 
you haven’t any business in the world, but to be always giv- 
ing way, and always making disturbances between man and 
wife, you’d be better out of it. Go along with you.” 

“Follow her! To desperation!” 

Again the old man heard the voices. Looking up, he saw 
the figures hovering in the air, and pointing where she went, 
down the dark street. 

“ She loves it ! ” he exclaimed, in agonised entreaty for 
her. “ Chimes ! she loves it still ! ” 

“Follow her!” The shadows swept upon the track she 
had taken, like a cloud. 

He joined in the pursuit; he kept close to her; he looked 
into her face. He saw the same fierce and terrible expres- 
sion mingling with her love, and kindling in her eyes. He 
heard her say, “ Like Lilian ! To be changed like Lilian ! ” 
and her speed redoubled. 

Oh, for something to awaken her. For any sight, or 
sound, or scent, to call up tender recollections in a brain on 
fire! For any gentle image of the Past, to rise before her! 

“ I was her father ! I was her father ! ” cried the old man, 
stretching out his hands to the dark shadows flying on above. 
“ Have mercy on her, and on me ! Where does she go ? 
Turn her back ! I was her father ! ” 

But they only pointed to her, as she hurried on ; and 
said, “ To desperation ! Learn it from the creature dearest 
to your heart ! ” 

A hundred voices echoed it. The air was made of breath 
expended in those words. He seemed to take them in, at 
every gasp he drew. They were everywhere, and not to 
be escaped. And still she hurried on; the same light in her 
eyes, the same words in her mouth ; “ Like Lilian ! To be 
changed like Lilian ! ” 

All at once she stopped. 


THE CHIMES 


156 

Now, turn her back!” exclaimed the old man, tearing 
his white hair. “My child! Meg! Turn her back! Great 
Father, turn her back ! ” 

In her own scanty shawl, she wrapped the baby warm. 
With her fevered hands, she smoothed its limbs, composed 
its face, arranged its mean attire. In her wasted arms she 
folded it, as though she never would resign it more. . And 
with her dry lips, kissed it in a final pang, and last long 
agony of Love. 

Putting its tiny hand up to her neck, and holding it there, 
within her dress: next to her distracted heart: she set its 
sleeping face against her: closely, steadily, against her: and 
sped onward to the River. 

To the rolling River, swift and dim, where Winter Night 
sat brooding like the last dark thoughts of many who had 
sought a refuge there before her. Where scattered lights 
upon the banks gleamed sullen, red, and dull, as torches that 
were burning there, to show the way to Death. Where no 
abode of living people cast its shadow, on the deep, im- 
penetrable, melancholy shade. 

To the River! To that portal of Eternity, her desperate 
footsteps tended with the swiftness of its rapid waters run- 
ning to the sea. He tried to touch her as she passed him, 
going down to its dark level ; but the wild distempered form, 
the fierce and terrible love, the desperation that had left all 
human check or hold behind, swept by him like the wind. 

He followed her. She paused a moment on the brink, 
before the dreadful plunge. He fell down on his knees, and 
in a shriek addressed the figures in the Bells now hovering 
above them. 

“I have learnt it!” cried the old man. “From the crea- 
ture dearest to my heart ! Oh, save her, save her ! ” 

He could wind his fingers in her dress; could hold it! As 
the words escaped his lips, he felt his sense of touch return, 
and knew that he detained her. 

The figures looked down steadfastly upon him. 

“ I have learnt it ! ” cried the old man. “ Oh, have mercy 
on me in this hour, if, in my love for her, so young and good, 
I slandered Nature in the breasts of mothers rendered des- 


THE CHIMES 157 

perate! Pity my presumption, wickedness, and ignorance, 
and save her ! ” 

He felt his hold relaxing. They were silent still. 

Have mercy on her ! ’’ he exclaimed, “ as one in whom 
this dreadful crime has sprung from Love perverted; from 
the strongest, deepest Love we fallen creatures know ! Think 
what her misery must have been, when such seed bears such 
fruit! Heaven meant her to be good. There is no loving 
mother on the earth who might not come to this, if such a 
life had gone before. Oh, have mercy on my child, who, 
even at this pass, means mercy to her own, and dies herself, 
and perils her Immortal Soul, to save it I ’’ 

She was in his arms. He held her now. His strength 
was like a giant’s. 

I see the Spirit of the Chimes among you ! ” cried the 
old man, singling out the child, and speaking in some in- 
spiration, which their looks conveyed to him. ‘‘ I know that 
our inheritance is held in store for us by Time. I know there 
is a Sea of Time to rise one day, before which all who wrong 
us or oppress us will be swept away like leaves. I see it, 
•on the flow! I know that we must trust and hope, and 
neither doubt ourselves, nor doubt the Good in one another. 
I have learnt it from the creature dearest to my heart. I clasp 
her in my arms again. O Spirits, merciful and good, I 
take your lesson to my breast along with her! O Spirits, 
merciful and good, I am grateful ! ” 

He might have said more, but the Bells; the old familiar 
Bells, his own dear, constant, steady friends, the Chimes; 
began to ring the joy-peals for a New Year, so lustily, so 
merrily, so happily, so gaily, that he leapt upon his feet, and 
broke the spell that bound him. 

“ And whatever you do, father,” said Meg, don’t eat 
tripe again, without asking some doctor whether it’s likely 
to agree with you; for how you have been going on. Good 
gracious ! ” 

She was working with her needle, at the little table by the 
fire ; dressing her simple gown with ribbons for her wedding. 
So quietly happy, so blooming and youthful, so full of beau- 


THE CHIMES 


158 

tiful promise that he uttered a great cry as if it were an 
Angel in his house; then flew to clasp her in his arms. 

But he caught his feet in the newspaper, which had fallen 
on the hearth; and somebody came rushing in between 
them. 

No ! ” cried the voice of this same somebody ; a generous 
and jolly voice it was ! “Not even you. Not even you. 
The first kiss of Meg in the New Year is mine. Mine! I 
have been waiting outside the house, this hour, to hear the 
Bells and claim it. Meg, my precious prize, a happy year! 
A life of happy years, my darling wife ! ” 

And Richard smothered her with kisses. 

You never in all your life saw anything like Trotty after 
this. I don’t care where you have lived or what you have 
seen; you never in your life saw anything at all approach- 
ing him! He sat down in his chair and beat his knees and 
cried; he sat down in his chair and beat his knees and 
laughed ; he sat down in his chair and beat his knees 
and laughed and cried together; he got out of his chair and 
hugged Meg; he got out of his chair and hugged Richard; 
he got out of his chair and hugged them both at once; he 
kept running up to Meg, and squeezing her fresh face be- 
tween his hands and kissing it, going from her backwards 
not to lose sight of it, and running up again like a figure in 
a magic lantern; and whatever he did, he was constantly 
sitting himself down in his chair, and never stopping in it 
for one single moment; being — that’s the truth — beside him- 
self with joy. 

“ And to-morrow’s your wedding-day, my pet ! ” cried 
Trotty. “Your real, happy wedding-day!” 

“To-day!” cried Richard, shaking hands with him. “To- 
day. The Chimes are ringing in the New Year. Hear 
them ! ” 

They were ringing! Bless their sturdy hearts, they were 
ringing! Great Bells as they were: melodious, deep- 
mouthed, noble Bells; cast in no common metal; made by 
no common founder; when had they ever chimed like that 
before ! 

“ But to-day, my Pet,” said Trotty. “ You and Richard 
had some words to-day.” 


THE CHIMES 


159 

“ Because he’s such a bad fellow, father,” said Meg. 
“ An’t you, Richard ? Such a headstrong, violent man ! 
He’d have made no more of speaking his mind to that great 
Alderman, and putting him down I don’t know where, than 
he would of — ” 

'' — Kissing Meg,” suggested Richard. Doing it too ! 

No. Not a bit more,” said Meg. ‘‘ But I wouldn’t let 
him, father. Where would have been the use ! ” 

“Richard, my boy!” cried Trotty. “You was turned up 
Trumps originally; and Trumps you must be, till you die! 
But you were crying by the fire to-night, my pet, when I 
came home. Why did you cry by the fire ? ” 

“ I was thinking of the years we’ve passed together, father. 
Only that. And thinking you might miss me, and be lonely.” 

Trotty was backing off to that extraordinary chair again, 
when the child, who had been awakened by the noise, came 
running in half dressed. 

“Why, here she is!” cried Trotty, catching her up. 
“ Here’s little Lilian ! Ha, ha, ha ! Here we are and here 
we go! Oh, here we are and here we go again! And here 
we are and here we go ! and Uncle Will too ! ” Stopping 
in his trot to greet him heartily. “ Oh, Uncle Will, the 
vision that I’ve had to-night, through lodging you! Oh, 
Uncle Will, the obligations that you’ve laid me under, by 
your coming, my good friend ! ” 

Before Will Fern could make the least reply, a band of 
music burst into the room, attended by a lot of neighbours, 
screaming “A Happy New Year, Meg!” “A Happy Wed- 
ding ! ” “ Many of ’em ! ” and other fragmentary good 

wishes of that sort. The Drum (who was a private friend 
of Trotty ’s) then stepped forward, and said: 

“Trotty Veck, my boy! It’s got about, that your daugh- 
ter is going to be married to-morrow. There an’t a soul 
that knows you that don’t wish you well, or that knows her 
and don’t wish her well. Or that knows you both, and don’t 
wish you both all the happiness the New Year can bring. 
And here we are, to play it in and dance it in, accordingly.” 

Which was received with a general shout. The Drum 
was rather drunk, by the bye ; but never mind. 

“What a happiness it is. I’m sure,” said Trotty, “to be 


i6o 


THE CHIMES 


so esteemed! How kind and neighbourly you are! It’s all 
along of my dear daughter. She deserves it ! ” 

They were ready for a dance in half a second (Meg and 
Richard at the top) ; and the Drum was on the very brink 
of leathering away with all his power ; when a combination 
of prodigious sounds was heard outside, and a good-humoured 
comely woman of some fifty years of age, or thereabouts, 
came running in, attended by a man bearing a stone pitcher 
of terrific size, and closely followed by the marrow-bones 
and cleavers, and the Bells ; not the Bells, but a portable col- 
lection, on a frame. 

Trotty said, “It’s Mrs. Chickenstalker ! ” And sat down, 
and beat his knees again. 

“ Married, and not tell me, Meg ! ” cried the good woman. 
“Never! I couldn’t rest on the last night of the Old Year 
without coming to wish you joy. I couldn’t have done, it, 
Meg. Not if I had been bedridden. So here I am; and as 
it’s New Year’s Eve, and the Eve of your wedding too, my 
dear, I had a little flip made, and brought it with me.” 

Mrs. Chickenstalker’s notion of a little flip, did honour 
to her character. The pitcher steamed and smoked and 
reeked like a volcano; and the man who had carried it, was 
faint. 

“ Mrs. Tugby ! ” said Trotty, who had been going round 
and round her, in an ecstasy, “ I should say, Chickenstalker 
— Bless your heart and soul ! A Happy New Year, and 
many of ’em! Mrs. Tugby,” said Trotty when he had saluted 
her; “I should say, Chickenstalker — This is William Fern 
and Lilian.” 

The worthy dame, to his surprise, turned very pale and 
very red. 

“ Not Lilian Fern whose mother died in Dorsetshire ! ” said 
she. 

Her uncle answered, “Yes,” and meeting hastily, they ex- 
changed some hurried words together, of which the upshot 
was, that Mrs. Chickenstalker shook him by both hands ; 
saluted Trotty on his cheek again, of her own free will; 
and took the child to her capacious breast. 

“Will Fern!” said Trotty, pulling on his right-hand muf- 
fler. “Not the friend that you was hoping to find?” 


THE CHIMES 


i6i 


‘‘Ay!” returned Will, putting a hand on each of Trotty’s 
shoulders. “ And like to prove a’most as good a friend, if 
that can be, as one I found.” 

“Oh!” said Trotty. “Please to play up there. Will you 
have the goodness ! ” 

To the music of the band, the bells, the marrow-bones and 
cleavers, all at once; and while the Chimes were yet in lusty 
operation out of doors; Trotty, making Meg and Richard 
second couple, led otf Mrs. Chickenstalker down the dance, 
and danced it in a step unknown before or since; founded 
on his own peculiar trot. 

Had Trotty dreamed? Or are his joys and sorrows, and the 
actors in them, but a dream; himself a dream; the teller 
of this tale a dreamer, waking but now? If it be so, O 
Listener, dear to him in all his visions, try to bear in mind 
the stern realities from which these shadows come; and in 
your sphere — none is too wide, and none too limited for such 
an end — endeavour to correct, improve, and soften them. 
So may the New Year be a Happy one to You, Happy to 
many more whose Happiness depends on You! So may 
each Year be happier than the last, and not the meanest of our 
brethren or sisterhood debarred their rightful share, in what 
our Great Creator formed them to enjoy. 




THE CRICKET ON THE HEARTH 


A FAIRY TALE OF HOME 


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THE CRICKET ON THE HEARTH 


CHIRP THE FIRST 


HE Kettle began it! Don’t tell me what Mrs. Peery- 



X bingle said. I know better. Mrs. Peerybingle may 
leave it on record to the end of time that she couldn’t say 
which of them began it; but, I say the Kettle did. I ought 
to know, I hope? The Kettle began it, full five minutes by 
the little waxy-faced Dutch clock in the corner before the 
Cricket uttered a chirp. 

As if the clock hadn’t finished striking, and the convulsive 
little Haymaker at the top of it, jerking away right and left 
with a scythe in front of a Moorish Palace, hadn’t mowed 
down half an acre of imaginary grass before the Cricket 
joined in at all! 

Why, I am not naturally positive. Every one knows that. 
I wouldn’t set my own opinion against the opinion of Mrs. 
Peerybingle, unless I were quite sure, on any account what- 
ever. Nothing should induce me. But this is a question of 
fact. And the fact is, that the Kettle began it, at least five 
minutes before the Cricket gave any sign of being in existence. 
Contradict me : and I’ll say ten. 

Let me narrate exactly how it happened. I should have 
proceeded to do so, in my very first word, but for this plain 
consideration — if I am to tell a story I must begin at the begin- 
ning ; and how is it possible to begin at the beginning, without 
beginning at the Kettle? 

It appeared as if there were a sort of match, or trial of 
skill, you must understand, between the Kettle and the Cricket. 
And this is what led to it, and how it came about. 

Mrs. Peerybingle, going out into the raw twilight, and click- 
ing over the wet stones in a pair of pattens that worked in- 
numerable rough impressions of the first proposition in Euclid 


i6s 


i66 THE CRICKET ON THE HEARTH 


all about the yard — Mrs. Peerybingle filled the Kettle at the 
water-butt. Presently returning, less the pattens: and a good 
deal less, for they were tall and Mrs. Peerybingle was but 
short : she set the Kettle on the fire. In doing which she lost 
her temper, or mislaid it for an instant ; for, the water — being 
uncomfortably cold, and in that slippy, slushy, sleety sort of 
state wherein it seems to penetrate through every kind of sub- 
stance, patten rings included — ^had laid hold of Mrs. Peery- 
bingle’s toes, and even splashed her legs. And when we rather 
plume ourselves (with reason too) upon our legs, and keep 
ourselves particularly neat in point of stockings, we find this, 
for the moment, hard to bear. 

Besides, the Kettle was aggravating and obstinate. It 
wouldn’t allow itself to be adjusted on the top bar; it wouldn’t 
hear of accommodating itself kindly to the knobs of coal ; it 
would lean forward with a drunken air, and dribble, a very 
Idiot of a Kettle, on the hearth. It was quarrelsome; and 
hissed and sputtered morosely at the fire. To sum up all, the 
lid, resisting Mrs. Peerybingle’s fingers, first of all turned 
topsy-turvy, and then, with an ingenious pertinacity deserving 
of a better cause, dived sideways in — down to the very bottom 
of the Kettle. And the hull of the Royal George has never 
made half the monstrous resistance to coming out of the water, 
which the lid of that Kettle employed against Mrs. Peery- 
bingle, before she got it up again. 

It looked sullen and pig-headed enough, even then ; carrying 
its handle with an air of defiance, and cocking its spout pertly 
and mockingly at Mrs. Peerybingle, as if it said, “ I won’t 
boil. Nothing shall induce me ! ” 

But Mrs. Peerybingle, with restored good humour, dusted 
her chubby little hands against each other, and sat down be- 
fore the Kettle: laughing. Meantime, the jolly blaze uprose 
and fell, flashing and gleaming on the little Haymaker at the 
top of the Dutch clock, until one might have thought he stood 
stock still before the Moorish Palace, and nothing was in 
motion but the flame. 

He was on the move, however ; and had his spasms, two to 
the second, all right and regular. But his sufferings when the 
clock was going to strike were frightful to behold ; and when 
a Cuckoo looked out of a trap-door in the Palace, and gave 


THE CRICKET ON THE HEARTH 167 

note six times, it shook him, each time, like a spectral voice — 
or like a something wiry, plucking at his legs. 

It was not until a violent commotion and a whirring noise 
among the weights and ropes below him had quite subsided, 
that this terrified Haymaker became himself again. Nor was 
he startled without reason ; for these rattling, bony skeletons 
of clocks are very disconcerting in their operation, and I 
wonder very much how any set of men, but most of all how 
Dutchmen, can have had a liking to invent them. For there 
is a popular belief that Dutchmen love broad cases and much 
clothing for their own lower selves; and they might know 
better than to leave their clocks so very lank and unprotected, 
surely. 

Now it was, you observed, that the Kettle began to spend the 
evening. Now it was, that the Kettle, growing mellow and 
musical, began to have irrepressible gurglings in its throat, 
and to indulge in short vocal snorts, which it checked in the 
bud, as if it hadn’t quite made up its mind yet, to be good 
company. Now it was, that after two or three such vain at- 
tempts to stifle its convivial sentiments, it threw off all morose- 
ness, all reserve, and burst into a stream of song so cosy and 
hilarious, as never maudlin nightingale yet formed the least 
idea of. 

So plain, too! Bless you, you might have understood it 
like a book — better than some books you and I could name, 
perhaps. With its warm breath gushing forth in a light cloud 
which merrily and gracefully ascended a few feet, then hung 
about the chimney-corner as its own domestic Heaven, it 
trolled its song with that strong energy of cheerfulness, that 
its iron body hummed and stirred upon the fire; and the lid 
itself, the recently rebellious lid — such is the influence of a 
bright example — performed a sort of jig, and clattered like a 
deaf and dumb young cymbal that had never known the use 
of its twin brother. 

That this song of the Kettle’s was a song of invitation and 
welcome to somebody out of doors ; to somebody at that mo- 
ment coming on, towards the snug small home and the crisp 
fire; there is no doubt whatever. Mrs. Peerybingle knew it, 
perfectly, as she sat musing, before the hearth. It’s a dark 
night, sang the Kettle, and the rotten leaves are lying by the 


i68 THE CRICKET ON THE HEARTH 

way; and above, all is mist and darkness, and below, all is 
mire and clay; and there’s only one relief in all the sad and 
murky air ; and I don’t know that it is one, for it’s nothing but 
a glare, of deep and angry crimson, where the sun and wind 
together, set a brand upon the clouds for being guilty of such 
weather; and the widest open country is a long dull streak of 
black; and there’s hoar-frost on the finger-post, and thaw 
upon the track; and the ice isn’t water, and the water isn’t 
free; and you couldn’t say that anything is what it ought to 
be; but he’s coming, coming, coming! — 

And here, if you like, the Cricket did chime in! with a 
Chirrup, Chirrup, Chirrup of such magnitude, by way of 
chorus; with a voice, so astoundingly disproportionate to its 
size, as compared with the Kettle; (size! you couldn’t see it!) 
that if it had then and there burst itself like an overcharged 
gun; if it had fallen a victim on the spot, and chirruped its 
little body into fifty pieces: it would have seemed a natural 
and inevitable consequence, for which it had expressly 
laboured. 

The Kettle had had the last of its solo performance. It 
persevered with undiminished ardour; but the Cricket took 
first fiddle and kept it. Good Heaven, how it chirped! Its 
shrill, sharp, piercing voice resounded through the house, and 
seemed to twinkle in the outer darkness like a Star. There 
was an indescribable little trill and tremble in it, at its loudest, 
which suggested its being carried off its legs, and made to 
leap again, by its own intense enthusiasm. Yet they went 
very well together, the Cricket and the Kettle. The burden 
of the song was still the same ; and louder, louder, louder still, 
they sang it in their emulation. 

The fair little listener — for fair she was, and young : though 
something of what is called the dumpling shape; but I don’t 
myself object to that — lighted a candle; glanced at the Hay- 
maker on the top of the clock, who was getting in a pretty 
average crop of minutes ; and looked out of the window, where 
she saw nothing, owing to the darkness, but her own face 
imaged in the glass. And my opinion is (and so would yours 
have been), that she might have looked a long way, and seen 
nothing half so agreeable. When she came back, and sat 
down in her former seat, the Cricket and the Kettle were still 


THE CRICKET ON THE HEARTH 169 

keeping it up, with a perfect fury of competition. The Kettle’s 
weak side clearly being that he didn’t know when he was 
beat. 

There was all the excitement of a race about it. Chirp, 
chirp, chirp! Cricket a mile ahead. Hum, hum, hum — m 
— ^m! Kettle making play in the distance, like a great top. 
Chirp, chirp, chirp I Cricket round the corner. Hum, hum, 
hum — m — m ! Kettle sticking to him in his own way ; no 
idea of giving in. Chirp, chirp, chirp! Cricket fresher than 
ever. Hum, hum, hum — m — m ! Kettle slow and steady. 
Chirp, chirp, chirp! Cricket going in to finish him. Hum, 
hum, hum — m — m! Kettle not to be finished. Until at last, 
they got so jumbled together, in the hurry-skurry, helter- 
skelter, of the match, that whether the Kettle chirped and the 
Cricket hummed, or the Cricket chirped and the Kettle 
hummed, or they both chirped and both hummed, it would have 
taken a clearer head than yours or mine to have decided with 
anything like certainty. But of this, there is no doubt: that 
the Kettle and the Cricket, at one and the same moment, and 
by some power of amalgamation best known to themselves, 
sent, each, his fireside song of comfort streaming into a ray 
of the candle that shone out through the window ; and a long 
way down the lane. And this light, bursting on a certain 
person who, on the instant, approached towards it through 
the gloom, expressed the whole thing to him, literally in a 
twinkling, and cried, “ Welcome home, old fellow ! Wel- 
come home, my Boy ! ” 

This end attained, the Kettle, being dead beat, boiled over, 
and was taken ofif the fire. Mrs. Peerybingle then went run- 
ning to the door, where, what with the wheels of a cart, the 
tramp of a horse, the voice of a man, the tearing in and out 
of an excited dog, and the surprising and mysterious appear- 
ance of a Baby, there was soon the very What’s-his-name to 
pay. 

Where the Baby came from, or how Mrs. Peerybingle got 
hold of it in that flash of time, I don’t know. But a live Baby 
there was, in Mrs. Peerybingle’s arms; and a pretty tolerable 
amount of pride she seemed to have in it, when she was drawn 
gently to the fire, by a sturdy figure of a man, much taller and 
much older than herself ; who had to stoop a long way down. 


170 THE CRICKET ON THE HEARTH 

to kiss her. But she was worth the trouble. Six foot six, 
with the lumbago, might have done it. 

“ Oh, goodness, John ! said Mrs. P. What a state 
you’re in with the weather ! ” 

He was something the worse for it, undeniably. The thick 
mist hung in clots upon his eyelashes like candied thaw ; and 
between the fog and fire together, there were rainbows in his 
very whiskers. 

“ Why, you see. Dot,” John made answer, slowly, as he 
unrolled a shawl from about his throat; and warmed his 
hands ; it — it an’t exactly summer weather. So, no won- 
der.” 

“ I wish you wouldn’t call me Dot, John. I don’t like it,” 
said Mrs. Peerybingle: pouting in a way that clearly showed 
she did like it, very much. 

'‘Why, what else are you?” returned John, looking down 
upon her with a smile, and giving her waist as light a squeeze 
as his huge hand and arm could give. " A dot and ” — here 
he glanced at the Baby — " a dot and carry — I won’t say it, 
for fear I should spoil it; but I was very near a joke. I don’t 
know as ever I was nearer.” He was often near to something 
or other very clever, by his own account : this lumbering, slow, 
honest John; this John so heavy, but so light of spirit; so 
rough upon the surface, but so gentle at the core; so dull 
without, so quick within; so stolid, but so good! O Mother 
Nature, give thy children the true Poetry of Heart that hid 
itself in this poor Carrier’s breast — ^he was but a Carrier by 
the way — and we can bear to have them talking Prose, and 
leading lives of Prose; and bear to bless Thee for their com- 
pany I 

It was pleasant to see Dot, with her little figure and her 
Baby in her arms: a very doll of a Baby: glancing with a 
coquettish thoughtfulness at the fire, and inclining her deli- 
cate little head just enough on one side to let it rest in an 
odd, half-natural, half-affected, wholly nestling and agreeable 
manner, on the great rugged-figure of the Carrier. It was 
pleasant to see him, with his tender awkwardness, endeavour- 
ing to adapt his rude support to her slight need, and make his 
burly middle-age a leaning-staff not inappropriate to her 
blooming youth. It was pleasant to observe how Tilly Slow- 


THE CRICKET ON THE HEARTH 171 

boy, waiting in the background for the Baby, took special 
cognisance (though in her earliest teens) of this grouping; 
and stood with her mouth and eyes wide open, and her head 
thrust forward, taking it in as if it were air. Nor was it less 
agreeable to observe how John the Carrier, reference being 
made by Dot to the aforesaid Baby, checked his hand when on 
the point of touching the infant, as if he thought he might 
crack it; and bending down, surveyed it from a safe distance, 
with a kind of puzzled pride: such as an amiable mastiif 
might be supposed to show, if he found himself, one day, the 
father of a young canary. 

“An’t he beautiful, John? Don’t he look precious in his 
sleep ? ” 

‘‘ Very precious,” said John. Very much so. He gener- 
ally is asleep, an’t he ? ” 

“Lor, John! Good gracious no!” 

“ Oh,” said John, pondering. “ I thought his eyes was 
generally shut. Hallo ! ” 

“ Goodness, John, how you startle one ! ” 

“ It an’t right for him to turn ’em up in that way ! ” said the 
astonished Carrier, “ is it ? See how he’s winking with both 
of ’em at once! And look at his mouth! why he’s gasping 
like a gold and silver fish ! ” 

“ You don’t deserve to be a father, you don’t,” said Dot, 
with all the dignity of an experienced matron. “ But how 
should you know what little complaints children are troubled 
with, John! You wouldn’t so much as know their names, 
you stupid fellow.” And when she had turned the Baby over 
on her left arm, and had slapped its back as a restorative, she 
pinched her husband’s ear, laughing. 

“ No,” said John, pulling off his outer coat. “ It’s very 
true, Dot. I don’t know much about it. I only know that 
I’ve been fighting pretty stiffly with the Wind to-night. It’s 
been blowing north-east, straight into the cart, the whole way 
home.” 

“ Poor old man, so it has ! ” cried Mrs. Peerybingle, in- 
stantly becoming very active. “ Here ! Take the precious 
darling, Tilly, while I make myself of some use. Bless it, I 
could smother it with kissing it, I could! Hie then, good 
dog ! Hie Boxer, boy ! Only let me make the tea first, John ; 


172 THE CRICKET ON THE HEARTH 

and then I’ll help you with the parcels, like a busy bee. ‘ How 
doth the little ’ — and all the rest of it, you know, John. Did 
you ever learn ‘ how doth the little,’ when you went to school, 
John?” 

“ Not to quite know it,” John returned. “ I was very near 
it once. But I should only have spoilt it, I dare say.” 

“ Ha, ha ! ” laughed Dot. She had the blithest little laugh 
you ever heard. “ What a dear old darling of a dunce you 
are, John, to be sure! ” 

Not at all disputing this position, John went out to see that 
the boy with the lantern, which had been dancing to and fro 
before the door and window, like a Will of the Wisp, took 
due care of the horse; who was fatter than you would quite 
believe, if I gave you his measure, and so old that his birthday 
was lost in the mists of antiquity. Boxer, feeling that his at- 
tentions were due to the family in general, and must be im- 
partially distributed, dashed in and out with bewildering incon- 
stancy ; now describing a circle of short barks round the horse, 
where he was being rubbed down at the stable-door; now 
feigning to make savage rushes at his mistress, and facetiously 
bringing himself to sudden stops; now eliciting a shriek from 
Tilly Slowboy, in the low nursing-chair near the fire, by the 
unexpected application of his moist nose to her countenance, 
now exhibiting an obtrusive interest in the Baby; now going 
round and round upon the hearth, and lying down as if he 
had established himself for the night; now getting up again, 
and taking that nothing of a fag-end of a tail of his, out into 
the weather, as if he had just remembered an appointment, 
and was off, at a round trot, to keep it. 

‘‘ There ! There’s the teapot, ready on the hob ! ” said Dot ; 
as briskly busy as a child at play at keeping house. ‘‘ And 
there’s the cold knuckle of ham; and there’s the butter; and 
there’s the crusty loaf, and all. Here’s the clothes-basket for 
the small parcels, John, if you’ve got any there — where are 
you, John? Don’t let the dear child fall under the grate, 
Tilly, whatever you do.” 

It may be noted of Miss Slowboy, in spite of her rejecting 
the caution with some vivacity, that she had a rare and surpris- 
ing talent for getting this Baby into difficulties: and had 
several times imperilled its short life, in a quiet way peculiarly 


THE CRICKET ON THE HEARTH 173 

her own. She was of a spare and straight shape, this young 
lady, insomuch that her garments appeared to be in constant 
danger of sliding off those sharp pegs, her shoulders, on which 
they were loosely hung. Her costume was remarkable for the 
partial development, on all possible occasions, of some flannel 
vestment of a singular structure; also for affording glimpses, 
in the region of the back, of a corset or pair of stays in colour 
a dead-green. Being always in a state of gaping admiration 
at everything, and absorbed besides in the perpetual contem- 
plation of her mistress’s perfections and the Baby’s, Miss 
Slowboy, in her little errors of judgment, may be said to have 
done equal honour to her head and to her heart; and though 
these did less honour to the Baby’s head, which they were the 
occasional means of bringing into contact with deal doors, 
dressers, stair-rails, bedposts, and other foreign substances, 
still they were the honest results of Tilly Slowboy’s constant 
astonishment at finding herself so kindly treated, and installed 
in such a comfortable home. For, the maternal and paternal 
Slowboy were alike unknown to Fame, and Tilly had been 
bred by public charity, a Foundling; which word, though only 
differing from Fondling by one vowel’s length, is very dif- 
ferent in meaning, and expresses quite another thing. 

To have seen little Mrs. Peerybingle come back with her 
husband; tugging at the clothes-basket, and making the most 
strenuous exertions to do nothing at all (for he carried it) ; 
would have amused you, almost as much as it amused 
him. It may have entertained the Cricket too, for anything 
I know; but certainly, it now began to chirp again, vehe- 
mently. 

“ Hey-day ! ” said John, in his slow way. “ It’s merrier than 
ever, to-night, I think.” 

“And it’s sure to bring us good fortune, John! It always 
has done so. To have a Cricket on the Hearth, is the luckiest 
thing in all the world ! ” 

John looked at her as if he had very nearly got the thought 
into his head, that she was his Cricket in chief, and he quite 
agreed with her. But it was probably one of his narrow 
escapes, for he said nothing. 

“ The first time I heard its cheerful little note, John, was on 
that night when you brought me home — when you brought 


174 the cricket ON THE HEARTH 

me to my new home here; its little mistress. Nearly a year 
ago. You recollect, John?’’ 

Oh, yes. John remembered. I should think so! 

‘‘ Its chirp was such a welcome to me ! It seemed so full 
of promise and encouragement. It seemed to say, you would 
be kind and gentle with me and would not expect (I had a 
fear of that, John, then) to find an old head on the shoulders 
of your foolish little wife.” ) 

John thoughtfully patted one of the shoulders, and then the 
head, as though he would have said No, no; he had had no 
such expectation; he had been quite content to take them as 
they were. And really he had reason. They were very 
comely. 

“ It spoke the truth, John, when it seemed to say so ; for 
you have ever been, I am sure, the best, the most considerate, 
the most affectionate of husbands to me. This has been a 
happy home, John ; and I love the Cricket for its sake ! ” 

“ Why, so do I then,” said the Carrier. “ So do I, Dot.” 
“ I love it for the many times I have heard it, and the many 
thoughts its harmless music has given me. Sometimes, in the 
twilight, when I felt a little solitary and down-hearted, John — 
before Baby was here to keep me company and make the house 
gay — when I have thought how lonely you would be if I 
should die; how lonely I should be if I could know that you 
had lost me, dear ; its Chirp, Chirp, Chirp upon the hearth, has 
seemed to tell me of another little voice, so sweet, so very dear 
to me, before whose coming sound my trouble vanished like a 
dream. And when I used to fear — I did fear once, John; I 
was very young you know — that ours might prove to be an 
ill-assorted marriage : I being such a child, and you more like 
my guardian than my husband ; and that you might not, how- 
ever hard you tried, be able to learn to love me, as you hoped 
and prayed you might ; its Chirp, Chirp, Chirp has cheered me 
up again, and filled me with new trust and confidence. I was 
thinking of these things, dear, when I sat expecting you ; and 
I love the Cricket for their sake ! ” 

‘‘And so do I,” repeated John. “But Dot? I hope and 
pray that I might learn to love you? How you talk! I had 
learnt that, long before I brought you here, to be the Cricket’s 
little mistress. Dot ! ” 


THE CRICKET ON THE HEARTH 175 

She laid her hand, an instant, on his arm, and looked up at 
him with an agitated face, as if she would have told him some- 
thing. Next moment she was down upon her knees before 
the basket; speaking in a sprightly voice, and busy with the 
parcels. 

There are not many of them to-night, John, but I saw 
some goods behind the cart, just now; and though they give 
more trouble, perhaps, still they pay as well; so we have no 
reason to grumble, have we? Besides, you have been deliver- 
ing, I dare say, as you came along? ” 

Oh, yes,’’ John said. “ A good many.” 

“Why, what’s this round box? Heart alive, John, it’s a 
wedding-cake ! ” 

“ Leave a woman alone to find out that,” said John, ad- 
miringly. “Now a man would never have thought of it! 
Whereas, it’s my belief that if you was to pack a wedding-cake 
up in a tea-chest, or a turn-up bedstead, or a pickled salmon 
keg, or any unlikely thing, a woman would be sure to find it 
out directly. Yes ; I called for it at the pastry-cook’s.” 

“ And it weighs I don’t know what — whole hundred- 
weights ! ” cried Dot, making a great demonstration of trying 
to lift it. “ Whose is it, John? Where is it going? ” 

“ Read the writing on the other side,” said John. 

“ Why, John ! My Goodness, John 1 ” 

“Ah! who’d have thought it!” John returned. 

“ You never mean to say,” pursued Dot, sitting on the floor 
and shaking her head at him, “ that it’s Gruff and Tackleton 
the toymaker ! ” 

John nodded. 

Mrs. Peerybingle nodded also, fifty times at least. Not in 
assent — in dumb and pitying amazement ; screwing up her lips 
the while, with all their little force (they were never made for 
screwing up; I am clear of that), and looking the good Carrier 
through and through, in her abstraction. Miss Slowboy, in 
the mean time, who had a mechanical power of reproducing 
scraps of current conversation for the delectation of the Baby, 
with all the sense struck out of them, and all the nouns changed 
into the plural number, inquired aloud of that young creature. 
Was it Gruffs and Tackletons the toymakers then, and Would 
it call at Pastry-cooks for wedding-cakes, and Did its mothers 


176 THE CRICKET ON THE HEARTH 

know the boxe3 when its fathers brought them home; and so 
on. 

“ And that is really to come about ! ” said Dot. “ Why, she 
and I were girls at school together, John.” 

He might have been thinking of her: or nearly thinking of 
her, perhaps : as she was in that same school time. He looked 
upon her with a thoughtful pleasure, but he made no answer. 

“ And he’s as old ! As unlike her ! — Why, how many years 
older than you, is Gruff and Tackleton, John? ” 

“ How many more cups of tea shall I drink to-night at one 
sitting, than Gruff and Tackleton ever took in four, I won- 
der!” replied John, good-humouredly, as he drew a chair to 
the round table, and began at the cold ham. ‘‘ As to eating, 
I eat but little; but that little I enjoy, Dot.” 

Even this; his usual sentiment at meal times, one of his 
innocent delusions (for his appetite was always obstinate, and 
flatly contradicted him) ; awoke no smile in the face of his 
little wife, who stood among the parcels, pushing the cake-box 
slowly from her with her foot, and never once looked, though 
her eyes were cast down too, upon the dainty shoe she gener- 
ally was so mindful of. Absorbed in thought, she stood there, 
heedless alike of the tea and John (although he called to her, 
and rapped the table with his knife to startle her), until he 
rose and touched her on the arm ; when she looked at him for 
a moment, and hurried to her place behind the teaboard, laugh- 
ing at her negligence. But not as she had laughed before. 
The manner and the music were quite changed. 

The Cricket, too, had stopped. Somehow the room was not 
so cheerful as it had been. Nothing like it. 

‘‘So these are all the parcels, are they, John?” she said: 
breaking a long silence, which the honest Carrier had devoted 
to the practical illustration of one part of his favourite senti- 
ment — certainly enjoying what he ate, if it couldn’t be ad- 
mitted that he ate but little. “ So these are all the parcels ; 
are they, John?” 

“ That’s all,” said John. “ Why — no — I — ” laying down 
his knife and fork, and taking a long breath. “ I declare 
— I’ve clean forgotten the old gentleman ! ” 

“ The old gentleman ? ” 

“ In the cart,” said John. “ He was asleep, among the 


THE CRICKET ON THE HEARTH 177 

straw, the last time I saw him. IVe very nearly remembered 
him, twice, since I came in ; but he went out of my head again. 
Hallo! Yahip there! Rouse up! That’s my hearty!” 

John said these latter words outside the door, whither he 
had hurried with the candle in his hand. 

Miss Slowboy, conscious of some mysterious reference to 
The Old Gentleman, and connecting in her mystified imagi- 
nation certain associations of a religious nature with the phrase, 
was so disturbed, that hastily rising from the low chair by the 
fire to seek protection near the skirts of her mistress, arid 
coming into contact as she crossed the doorway with an 
ancient Stranger, she instinctively made a charge or butt at 
him with the only ofifensive instrument within her reach. This 
instrument happening to be the Baby, great commotion and 
alarm ensued, which the sagacity of Boxer rather tended to 
increase; for that good dog, more thoughtful than its master, 
had, it seemed, been watching the old gentleman in his sleep 
lest he should walk oif with a few young poplar-trees that 
were tied up behind the cart ; and he still attended on him 
very closely; worrying his gaiters in fact, and making dead 
sets at the buttons. 

'' You’re such an undeniable good sleeper. Sir,” said John, 
when tranquillity was restored; in the meantime the old 
gentleman had stood, bareheaded and motionless, in the centre 
of the room ; “ that I have half a mind to ask you where the 
other six are: only that would be a joke, and I know I should 
spoil it. Very near though,” murmured the Carrier, with a 
chuckle ; very near ! ” 

The Stranger, who had long white hair; good features, 
singularly bold and well defined for an old man; and dark, 
bright, penetrating eyes ; looked round with a smile, and saluted 
the Carrier’s wife by gravely inclining his head. 

His garb was very quaint and odd — a long, long way be- 
hind the time. Its hue was brown, all over. In his hand he 
held a great brown club or walking-stick; and striking this 
upon the floor, it fell asunder, and became a chair. On which 
he sat down, quite composedly. 

'' There ! ” said the Carrier, turning to his wife. ‘‘ That’s 
the way I found him, sitting by the roadside ! Upright as a 
milestone. And almost as deaf.” 


178 THE CRICKET ON THE HEARTH 

“Sitting in the open air, John!^’ 

“ In the open air,” replied the Carrier, “ just at dusk. ‘ Car- 
riage Paid,’ he said; and gave me eighteenpence. Then he 
got in. And there he is.” 

“ He’s going, John, I think! ” 

Not at all. He was only going to speak. 

“ If you please, I was to be left till called for,” said the 
Stranger, mildly. “ Don’t mind me.” 

With that, he took a pair of spectacles from one of his large 
pockets, and a book from another, and leisurely began to 
read. Making no more of Boxer than if he had been a house 
lamb ! 

The Carrier and his wife exchanged a look of perplexity. 
The Stranger raised his head ; and glancing from the latter to 
the former, said: 

“ Your daughter, my good friend? ” 

“ Wife,” returned John. 

“ Niece? ” said the Stranger. 

“ Wife,” roared John. 

“Indeed?” observed the Stranger. “Surely? Very 
young ! ” 

He quietly turned over, and resumed his reading. But 
before he could have read two lines, he again interrupted him- 
self to say: 

“ Baby, yours?” 

John gave him a gigantic nod; equivalent to an answer in 
the affirmative, delivered through a speaking-trumpet. 

“ Girl?” 

“ Bo-o-oy ! ” roared John. 

“ Also very young, eh ? ” 

Mrs. Peerybingle instantly struck in. “ Two months and 
three da-ays! Vaccinated just six weeks ago-o! Took very 
fine-ly! Considered, by the doctor, a remarkably beautiful 
chi-ild! Equal to the general run of children at five months 
o-old ! Takes notice, in a way quite won-der-ful. May seem 
impossible to you, but feels his legs al-ready ! ” 

Here the breathless little mother, who had been shrieking 
these short sentences into the old man’s ear, until her pretty 
face was crimsoned, held up the Baby before him as a stubborn 
and triumphant fact; while Tilly Slowboy, with a melodious 


THE CRICKET ON THE HEARTH 179 

cry of Ketcher, Ketcher ” — which sounded like some un- 
known words, adapted to a popular Sneeze — performed some 
cow-like gambols round that all-unconscious Innocent. 

^'Hark! He’s called for, sure enough,” said John. 

There’s somebody at the door. Open it, Tilly.” 

Before she could reach it, however, it was opened from 
without ; being a primitive sort of door, with a latch, that any 
one could lift if he chose — and a good many people did choose, 

I can tell you; for all kinds of neighbours liked to have a 
cheerful word or two with the Carrier, though he was no 
great talker himself. Being opened, it gave admission to a 
little, meagre, thoughtful, dingy-faced man, who seemed to 
have made himself a great-coat from the sack-cloth covering 
of some old box; for when he turned to shut the door, and 
keep the weather out, he disclosed upon the back of that gar- 
ment, the inscription G & T in large black capitals. Also the 
word GLASS in bold characters. 

“ Good evening, John ! ” said the little man. ‘‘ Good even- 
ing, Mum. Good evening, Tilly. Good evening, Unbe- 
known ! How’s Baby, Mum ? Boxer’s pretty well, I 
hope? ” 

“ All thriving, Caleb,” replied Dot. ‘‘ I am sure you need 
only look at the dear child, for one, to know that.” 

“ And I’m sure I need only look at you for another,” said 
Caleb. 

He didn’t look at her though; he had a wandering and 
thoughtful eye which seemed to be always projecting itself 
into some other time and place, no matter what he said; a 
description which will equally apply to his voice. 

“ Or at John for another,’' said Caleb. ‘‘ Or at Tilly, as 
far as that goes. Or certainly at Boxer.” 

“ Busy just now, Caleb? ” asked the Carrier. 

Why, pretty well, John,” he returned, with the distraught 
air of a man who was casting about for the Philosopher’s 
stone, at least. “ Pretty much so. There’s rather a run on 
Noah’s Arks at present. I could have wished to improve upon 
the Family, but I don’t see how it’s to be done at the price. 
It would be a satisfaction to one’s mind, to make it clearer 
which was Shems and Hams and which was Wives. Flies 
an’t on that scale neither, as compared with elephants you 


i8o THE CRICKET ON THE HEARTH 

know ! Ah ! well ! Have you got anything in the parcel line 
for me, John? ” 

The Carrier put his hand into a pocket of the coat he had 
taken off; and brought out, carefully preserved in moss and 
paper, a tiny flower-pot. 

“ There it is ! ” he said, adjusting it with great care. Not 
so much as a leaf damaged. Full of buds ! ” 

Caleb’s dull eye brightened, as he took it, and thanked him. 

Dear, Caleb,” said the Carrier. “ Very dear at this 
season.” 

‘‘ Never mind that. It would be cheap to me, whatever it 
cost,” returned the little man. ‘‘Anything else, John?” 

“ A small box,” replied the Carrier. “ Here you are ! ” 

“ ‘ For Caleb Plummer,’ ” said the little man, spelling out 
the direction. “ ‘ With Cash.’ With Cash, John. I don’t 
think it’s for me.” 

“ With Care,” returned the Carrier, looking over his shoul- 
der. “ Where do you make out cash ? ” 

“Oh! To be sure!” said Caleb. “It’s all right. With 
care ! Yes, yes ; that’s mine. It might have been with cash, 
indeed, if my dear Boy in the Golden South Americas had 
lived, John. You loved him like a son; didn’t you? You 
needn’t say you did. I know, of course. ‘ Caleb Plummer. 
With care.’ Yes, yes, it’s all right. It’s a box of dolls’ eyes 
for my daughter’s work. I wish it was her own sight in a 
box, John.” 

“ I wish it was, or could be ! ” cried the Carrier. 

“ Thank’ee,” said the little man. “ You speak very hearty. 
To think that she should never see the Dolls — and them a- 
staring at her, so bold, all day long! That’s where it cuts. 
What’s the damage, John?” 

“ I’ll damage you,” said John, “ if you inquire. Dot ! Very 
near? ” 

“ Well ! it’s like you to say so,” observed the little man. 
“ It’s your kind way. Let me see. I think that’s all.” 

“ I think not,” said the Carrier. “ Try again.” 

“ Something for our Governor, eh?” said Caleb, after pon- 
dering a little while. “To be sure. That’s what I came for; 
but my head’s so running on them Arks and things! He 
hasn’t been here, has he ? ” 


THE CRICKET ON THE HEARTH i8i 

Not he/' returned the Carrier. He’s too busy, court- 
ing.” 

“ He’s coming round though,” said Caleb ; for he told me 
to keep on the near side of the road going home, and it 
was ten to one he’d take me up. I had better go, by the bye. — 
You couldn’t have the goodness to let me pinch Boxer’s tail, 
Mum, for half a moment, could you? ” 

“ Why, Caleb ! what a question ! ” 

Oh, never mind. Mum,” said the little man. He 
mightn’t like it perhaps. There’s a small order just come 
in, for barking dogs; and I should wish to go as close to 
Natur’ as I could, for sixpence. That’s all. Never mind. 
Mum.” 

It happened opportunely, that Boxer, without receiving the 
proposed stimulus, began to bark with great zeal. But as this 
implied the approach of some new visitor, Caleb, postponing 
his study from the life to a more convenient season, shouldered 
the round box, and took a hurried leave. He might have 
spared himself the trouble, for he met the visitor upon the 
threshold. 

‘‘Oh! You are here, are you? Wait a bit. I’ll take you 
home. John Peerybingle, my service to you. More of my 
service to your pretty wife. Handsomer every day! Better 
too, if possible! And younger,” mused the speaker, in a low 
voice ; “ that’s the Devil of it ! ” 

“ I should be astonished at your paying compliments, Mr. 
Tackleton,” said Dot, not with the best grace in the world; 
“ but for your condition.” 

“ You know all about it then? ” 

“ I have got myself to believe it, somehow,” said Dot. 

“ After a hard struggle, I suppose? ” 

“ Very.” 

Tackleton the Toy-merchant, pretty generally known as 
Gruff and Tackleton — for that was the firm, though Gruff 
had been bought out long ago ; only leaving his name, and as 
some said his nature, according to its Dictionary meaning, in 
the business — Tackleton the Toy-merchant, was a man whose 
vocation had been quite misunderstood by his Parents and 
Guardians. If they had made him a Money Lender, or a 
sharp Attorney, or a Sheriff’s Officer, or a Broker, he might 


i 82 the cricket on THE HEARTH 

have sown his -discontented oats in his youth, and, after hav- 
ing had the full run of himself in ill-natured transactions, might 
have turned out amiable, at last, for the sake of a little fresh- 
ness and novelty. But, cramped and chafing in the peaceable 
pursuit of toy-making, he was a domestic Ogre, who had been 
living on children all his life, and was their implacable enemy. 
He despised all toys ; wouldn’t have bought one for the world ; 
delighted, in his malice, to insinuate grim experiences into 
the faces of brown-paper farmers who drove pigs to mar- 
ket, bellmen who advertised lost lawyers’ consciences, move- 
able old ladies who darned stockings or carved pies ; and 
other like samples of his stock in trade. In appalling masks ; 
hideous, hairy, red-eyed Jacks in Boxes; Vampire Kites; de- 
moniacal Tumblers who wouldn’t lie down, and were per- 
petually flying forward, to stare infants out of countenance; 
his soul perfectly revelled. They were his only relief, and 
safety-valve. He was great in such inventions. Anything 
suggestive of a Pony-nightmare, was delicious to him. He 
had even lost money (and he took to that toy very kindly) by 
getting up Goblin slides for magic-lanterns, whereon the 
Powers of Darkness were depicted as a sort of supernatural 
shell-fish, with human faces. In intensifying the portraiture 
of Giants, he had sunk quite a little capital; and, though no 
painter himself, he could indicate, for the instruction of his 
artists, with a piece of chalk, a certain furtive leer for the 
countenances of those monsters, which was safe to destroy the 
peace of mind of any young gentleman between the ages of 
six and eleven, for the whole Christmas or Midsummer Va- 
cation. 

What he was in toys, he was (as most men are) in all 
other things. You may easily suppose, therefore, that within 
the green cape, which reached down to the calves of his legs, 
there was buttoned up to the chin an uncommonly pleasant 
fellow ; and that he was about as choice a spirit, and as agree- 
able a companion, as ever stood in a pair of bull-headed look- 
ing boots with mahogany-coloured tops. 

Still, Tackleton, the Toy-merchant, was going to be mar- 
ried. In spite of all this, he was going to be married. And 
to a young wife too; a beautiful young wife. 

He didn’t look much like a bridegroom, as he stood in 


THE CRICKET ON THE HEARTH 183 

the Carrier’s kitchen, with a twist in his dry face, and a 
screw in his body, and his hat jerked over the bridge of his 
nose, and his hands tucked down into the bottoms of his 
pockets, and his whole sarcastic ill-conditioned self peering 
out of one little corner of one little eye, like the concen- 
trated essence of any number of ravens. But, a Bridegroom 
he designed to be. 

“ In three *days’ time. Next Thursday. The last day of 
the first month in the year. That’s my wedding-day,” said 
Tackleton. 

Did I mention that he had always one eye wide open, and 
one eye nearly shut; and that the one eye nearly shut, was 
always the expressive eye? I don’t think I did. 

“ That’s my wedding-day ! ” said Tackleton, rattling his 
money. 

‘‘Why, it’s our wedding-day too,” exclaimed the Carrier. 

“Ha ha !” laughed Tackleton. “Odd! You’re just such 
another couple. Just!” 

The indignation of Dot at this presumptuous assertion is 
not to be described. What next? His imagination would 
compass the possibility of just such another Baby, perhaps. 
The man was mad. 

“ I say ! A word with you,” murmured Tackleton, nudg- 
ing the Carrier with his elbow, and taking him a little apart. 
“You’ll come to the wedding? We’re in the same boat, you 
know.” 

“ How in the same boat ? ” inquired the Carrier. 

“ A little disparity, you know,” said Tackleton, with an- 
other nudge. “ Come and spend an evening with us, before- 
hand.” 

“Why?” demanded John, astonished at this pressing hos- 
pitality. 

“ Why ? ” returned the other. “ That’s a new way of re- 
ceiving an invitation. Why, for pleasure; sociability, you 
know, and all that ! ” 

“ I thought you were never sociable,” said John, in his 
plain way. 

“ Tchah ! It’s of no use to be anything but free with you, 
I see,” said Tackleton. “ Why, then, the truth is you have a 
< — what tea-drinking people call a sort of a comfortable ap- 


i 84 the cricket ON THE HEARTH 

pearance together: you and your wife. We know better, 
you know, but — ” 

“ No, we don’t know better,” interposed John. “ What 
are you talking about ? ” 

‘‘Well! We don’t know better, then,” said Tackleton. 
“We’ll agree that we don’t. As you like; what does it mat- 
ter? I was going to say, as you have that soit of appear- 
ance, your company will produce a favourable effect on Mrs. 
Tackleton that will be. And, though I don’t think your good 
lady’s very friendly to me, in this matter, still she can’t help 
herself from falling into my views, for there’s a compact- 
ness and cosiness of appearance about her that always tells, 
even in an indifferent case. You’ll say you’ll come ? ” 

“We have arranged to keep our Wedding-Day (as far as 
that goes) at home,” said John. “We have made the prom- 
ise to ourselves these six months. We think, you see, that 
home — ” 

“Bah! what’s home?” cried Tackleton. “Four walls and 
a ceiling (why don’t you kill that Cricket; I would! I al- 
ways do. I hate their noise). There are four walls and a 
ceiling at my house. Come to me ! ” 

“You kill your Crickets, eh?” said John. 

“ Scrunch ’em, Sir,” returned the other, setting his heel 
heavily on the floor. “You’ll say you’ll come? It’s as much 
your interest as mine, you know, that the women should 
persuade each other that they’re quiet and contented, and 
couldn’t be better off. I know their way. Whatever one 
woman says, another woman is determined to clinch, always. 
There’s that spirit of emulation among ’em. Sir, that if your 
wife says to my wife, ‘ I’m the happiest woman in the world, 
and mine’s the best husband in the world, and I dote on him,’ 
my wife will say the same to yours, or more, and half believe 
it.” 

“ Do you mean to say she don’t, then ? ” asked the Car- 
rier. 

“ Don’t ! ” cried Tackleton, with a short, sharp laugh. 
“Don’t what?” 

The Carrier had had some faint idea of adding, “ dote 
upon you.” But happening to meet the half-closed eye, as 
it twinkled upon him over the turned-up collar of the cape, 


THE CRICKET ON THE HEARTH 185 

which was within an ace of poking it out, he felt it such 
an unlikely part and parcel of anything to be doted on, that 
he substituted, that she don’t believe it ? ” 

“Ah, you dog! You’re joking,” said Tackleton. 

But the Carrier, though slow to understand the full drift 
of his meaning, eyed him in such a serious manner, that he 
was obliged to be a little more explanatory. 

“ I have the humour,” said Tackleton : holding up the fingers 
of his left hand, and tapping the forefinger, to imply “ there 
I am, Tackleton to wit ” : “I have the humour. Sir, to marry 
a young wife and a pretty wife : ” here he rapped his little 
finger, to express the Bride; not sparingly, but sharply; with 
a sense of power. “ I’m able to gratify that humour and I 
do. It’s my whim. But — now look there.” 

He pointed to where Dot was sitting, thoughtfully, before 
the fire; leaning her dimpled chin upon her hand, and watch^ 
ing the bright blaze. The Carrier looked at her, and then 
at him, and then at her, and then at him again. 

“ She honours and obeys, no doubt, you know,” said Tackle- 
ton ; “ and that, as I am not a man of sentiment, is quite 
enough for me. But do you think there’s anything more in 
it?” 

“ I think,” observed the Carrier, “ that I should chuck 
any man out of window, who said there wasn’t.” 

“ Exactly so,” returned the other with an unusual alac- 
rity of assent. “To be sure! Doubtless you would. Of 
course. I’m certain of it. Good night. Pleasant dreams ! ” 

The good Carrier was puzzled, and made uncomfortable 
and uncertain, in spite of himself. He couldn’t help show- 
ing it, in his manner. 

“Good night, my dear friend!” said Tackleton, compas- 
sionately. “ I’m off. We’re exactly alike, in reality, I see. 
You won’t give us to-morrow evening? Well! Next day 
you go out visiting, I know. I’ll meet you there, and bring 
my wife that is to be. It’ll do her good. You’re agreeable? 
Thank’ee. What’s that ! ” 

It was a loud cry from the Carrier’s wife; a loud, sharp, 
sudden cry, that made the room ring, like a glass vessel. 
She had risen from her seat, and stood like one transfixed by 
terror and surprise. The Stranger had advanced towards 


,i86 THE CRICKET ON THE HEARTH 

the fire to ‘warm himself, and stood within a short stride of 
her chair. But quite still. 

Dot ! ” cried the Carrier. ‘‘ Mary ! Darling ! What’s the 
matter ? ’’ 

They were all about her in a moment. Caleb, who had 
been dozing on the cake-box, in the first imperfect recovery 
of his suspended presence of mind seized Miss Slowboy by 
the hair of her head, but immediately apologised. 

“ Mary ! ” exclaimed the Carrier, supporting her in his 
arms. “Are you ill! What is it? Tell me, dear.” 

She only answered by beating her hands together, and fall- 
ing into a wild fit of laughter. Then, sinking from his grasp 
upon the ground, she covered her face with her apron, and 
wept bitterly. And then she laughed again, and then she 
cried again; and then, she said how cold it was, and suffered 
him to lead her to the fire, where she sat down as before. 
The old man standing, as before; quite still. 

“ I’m better, John,” she said. “ I’m quite well now — 

I—” 

“John!” But John was on the other side of her. Why 
turn her face towards the strange old gentleman, as if ad- 
dressing him! Was her brain wandering? 

“ Only a fancy, John dear — a kind of shock — a something 
coming suddenly before my eyes — I don’t know what it was. 
It’s quite gone; quite gone.” 

“ I’m glad it’s gone,” muttered Tackleton, turning the ex- 
pressive eye all round the room. “ I wonder where it’s gone, 
and what it was. Humph! Caleb, come here. Who’s that 
with the grey hair?” 

“ I don’t know. Sir,” returned Caleb in a whisper. “ Never 
see him, before, in all my life. A beautiful figure for a nut- 
cracker; quite a new model. With a screw-jaw opening down 
into his waistcoat, he’d be lovely.” 

“ Not ugly enough,” said Tackleton. 

“ Or for a firebox, either,” observed Caleb, in deep con- 
templation, “ what a model ! Unscrew his head to put the 
matches in; turn him heels up’ards for the light; and what 
a firebox for a gentleman’s mantel-shelf, just as he stands! ” 

“ Not half ugly enough,” said Tackleton. “ Nothing in 
him at all. Come ! Bring that box ! All right now, I hope ? ” 


THE CRICKET ON THE HEARTH 187 

Oh, quite gone ! Quite gone ! ’’ said the little woman, 
waving him hurriedly away. '' Good night ! 

“ Good night, said Tackleton. “ Good night, John Peery- 
bingle! Take care how you carry that box, Caleb. Let it 
fall, and I’ll murder you ! Dark as pitch, and weather worse 
than ever, eh ? Good night ! ” 

So, with another sharp look round the room, he went out at 
the door ; followed by Caleb with the wedding-cake on his head. 

The Carrier had been so much astounded by his little wife, 
and so busily engaged in soothing and tending her, that he 
had scarcely been conscious of the Stranger’s presence, until 
now, when he again stood there, their only guest. 

‘‘ He don’t belong to them, you see,” said John. ‘‘ I must 
give him a hint to go.” 

“ I beg your pardon, friend,” said the old gentleman, ad- 
vancing to him ; the more so, as I fear your wife has not 
been well ; but the Attendant whom my infirmity,” he touched 
his ears and shook his head, “ renders almost indispensable, 
not having arrived, I fear there must be some mistake. The 
bad night which made the shelter of your comfortable cart 
(may I never have a worse!) so acceptable, is still as bad 
as ever. Would you, in your kindness, suffer me to rent a 
bed here?” 

Yes, yes,” cried Dot. ‘‘ Yes ! Certainly ! ” 

Oh ! ” said the Carrier, surprised by the rapidity of this 
consent. ‘‘ Well! I don’t object; but still I’m not quite sure 
that—” 

‘"Hush!” she interrupted. “Dear John!” 

“ Why, he’s stone deaf,” urged John. 

“I know he is, but — Yes, Sir, certainly. Yes! certainly! 
I’ll make him up a bed, directly, John.” 

As she hurried off to do it, the flutter of her spirits, and 
the agitation of her manner, were so strange, that the Car- 
rier stood looking after her, quite confounded. 

“ Did its mothers make it up a Beds then ! ” cried Miss 
Slowboy to the Baby; “and did its hair grow brown and 
curly, when its caps was lifted off, and frighten it, a pre- 
cious Pets, a-sitting by the fires ! ” 

With that unaccountable attraction of the mind to trifles, 
which is often incidental to a state of doubt and confusion, 


i88 THE CRICKET ON THE HEARTH 


the Carrier, as he walked slowly to and fro, found himself 
mentally repeating, even these absurd words, many times. 
So many times that he got them by heart, and was still con- 
ning them over and over, like a lesson, when Tilly, after 
administering as much friction to the little bald head with 
her hand as she thought wholesome (according to the prac- 
tice of nurses), had once more tied the Baby’s cap on. 

“And frighten it, a precious Pets, a-sitting by the fires. 
What frightened Dot, I wonder ! ” mused the Carrier, pacing 
to and fro. 

He scouted, from his heart, the insinuations of the Toy- 
merchant, and yet they filled him with a vague, indefinite 
uneasiness; for Tackleton was quick and sly; and he had 
that painful sense, himself, of being a man of slow perception, 
that a broken hint was always worrying to him. He cer- 
tainly had no intention in his mind of linking anything that 
Tackleton had said, with the unusual conduct of his wife; 
but the two subjects of reflection came into his mind together, 
and he could not keep them asunder. 

The bed was soon made ready; and the visitor, declining 
all refreshment but a cup of tea, retired. Then Dot: quite 
well again, she said: quite well again: arranged the great 
chair in the chimney-corner for her husband; filled his pipe 
and gave it him; and took her usual little stool beside him 
on the hearth. 

She always would sit on that little stool; I think she must 
have had a kind of notion that it was a coaxing, wheedling, 
little stool. 

She was, out and out, the very best filler of a pipe, I should 
say, in the four quarters of the globe. To see her put that 
chubby little finger in the bowl, and then blow down the pipe 
to clear the tube ; and, when she had done so, affect to think 
that there was really something in the tube, and blow a 
dozen times, and hold it to her eye like a telescope, with a 
most provoking twist in her capital little face, as she looked 
down it; was quite a brilliant thing. As to the tobacco, she 
was perfect mistress of the subject; and her lighting of the 
pipe, with a wisp of paper, when the Carrier had it in his 
mouth — going so very near his nose, and yet not scorching 
it — was Art: high Art, Sir. 


THE CRICKET ON THE HEARTH 189 

And the Cricket and the Kettle, tuning up again, acknowl- 
edged it ! The bright fire, blazing up again, acknowledged it ! 
The little Mower on the clock, in his unheeded work, ac- 
knowledged it! The Carrier, in his smoothing forehead and 
expanding face, acknowledged it, the readiest of all. 

And as he soberly and thoughtfully putYed at his old pipe; 
and as the Dutch clock ticked; and as the red fire gleamed; 
and as the Cricket chirped; that Genius of his Hearth and 
Home (for such the Cricket was) came out, in fairy shape, 
into the room, and summoned many forms of Home about 
him. Dots of all ages, and all sizes, filled the chamber. Dots 
who were merry children, running on before him, gathering 
flowers, in the fields; coy Dots, half shrinking from, half 
yielding to, the pleading of his own rough image; newly- 
married Dots, alighting at the door, and taking wondering 
possession of the household keys; motherly little Dots, at- 
tended by fictitious Slowboys, bearing babies to be christened ; 
matronly Dots, still young and blooming, watching Dots of 
daughters, as they danced at rustic balls; fat Dots, encircled 
and beset by troops of rosy grand-children; withered Dots, 
who leaned on sticks, and tottered as they crept along. 
Old Carriers too, appeared, with blind old Boxers lying 
at their feet; and newer carts with younger drivers (“ Peery- 
bingle Brothers ” on the tilt) ; and sick old Carriers, tended 
by the gentlest hands; and graves of dead and gone old 
Carriers, green in the churchyard. And as the Cricket showed 
him all these things — he saw them plainly, though his eyes 
were fixed upon the fire — the Carrier’s heart grew light and 
happy, and he thanked his Household Gods with all his might, 
and cared no more for Gruff and Tackleton than you do. 

But what was that young figure of a man, which the same 
Fair Cricket set so near Her stool, and which remained there, 
singly and alone? Why did it linger still, so near her, with 
its arm upon the chimney-piece, ever repeating “ Married ! and 
not to me 1 ” 

Oh, Dot ! Oh, failing Dot ! There is no place for it in all 
your husband’s visions; why has its shadow fallen on his 
hearth ! 


190 THE CRICKET ON THE HEARTH 


CHIRP THE SECOND 

C ALEB PLUMMER and his Blind Daughter lived all 
alone by themselves, as the Story-books say — and my 
blessing, with yours to back it I hope, on the Story-books, 
for saying anything in this workaday world ! — Caleb Plum- 
mer and his Blind Daughter lived all alone by themselves, in a 
little cracked nutshell of a wooden house, which was, in 
truth, no better than a pimple on the prominent red-brick 
nose of Gruff and Tackleton. The premises of Gruff and 
Tackleton were the great feature of the street; but you might 
have knocked down Caleb Plummer’s dwelling with a ham- 
mer or two, and carried off the pieces in a cart. 

If any one had done the dwelling-house of Caleb Plummer 
the honour to miss it after such an inroad, it would have 
been, no doubt, to commend its demolition as a vast improve- 
ment. It stuck to the premises of Gruff and Tackleton, like 
a barnacle to a ship’s keel, or a snail to a door, or a little 
bunch of toadstools to the stem of a tree. But it was the 
germ from which the full-grown trunk of Gruff and Tackle- 
ton had sprung; and under its crazy roof, the Gruff before 
last had, in a small way, made toys for a generation of old 
boys and girls, who had played with them, and found them 
out, and broken them, and gone to sleep. 

I have said that Caleb and his poor Blind Daughter lived 
here; and I should have said that Caleb lived here, and his 
poor Blind Daughter somewhere else; in an enchanted home 
of Caleb’s furnishing, where scarcity and shabbiness were not, 
and trouble never entered. Caleb was no sorcerer, but in the 
only magic art that still remains to us ; the magic of devoted, 
deathless love: Nature had been the mistress of his study; and 
from her teaching, all the wonder came. 

The Blind Girl never knew that ceilings were discoloured ; 
walls blotched and bare of plaster here and there; high crev- 
ices unstopped and widening every day; beams mouldering 
and tending downward. The Blind Girl never knew that 
iron was rusting, wood rotting, paper peeling off; the very 
size, and shape, and true proportion of the dwelling, wither- 
ing away. The Blind Girl never knew that ugly shapes of 



COPYRIGHT, 1913. BY FREDERICK A. STOKES COMPANY 


CALETl PLUMIMER AND IIIS BLIND DAUGHTER — igo 


©Cl-K 64231 


THE CRICKET ON THE HEARTH 191 

delf and earthenware were on the board; that sorrow and 
faintheartedness were in the house ; that Caleb’s scanty hairs 
were turning greyer and more grey, before her sightless face. 
The Blind Girl never knew they had a master, cold, exacting, 
and uninterested: never knew that Tackleton was Tackleton 
in short ; but lived in the belief of an eccentric humourist who 
loved to have his jest with them; and who while he was the 
Guardian Angel of their lives, disdained to hear one word of 
thankfulness. 

And all was Caleb’s doing; all the doing of her simple 
father! But he too had a Cricket on his Hearth; and lis- 
tening sadly to its music when the motherless Blind Child was 
very young, that Spirit had inspired him with the thought 
that even her great deprivation might be almost changed into 
a blessing, and the girl made happy by these little means. 
For all the Cricket Tribe are potent Spirits, even though 
the people who hold converse with them do not know it (which 
is frequently the case) ; and there are not in the Unseen 
World, Voices more gentle and more true; that may be so 
implicitly relied on, or that are so srertain to give none but 
tenderest counsel ; as the Voices in which the Spirits of the 
Fireside and the Hearth address themselves to human kind. 

Caleb and his daughter were at work together in their 
usual working-room, which served them for their ordinary 
living-room as well ; and a strange place it was. There were 
houses in it, finished and unfinished for Dolls of all stations 
in life. Suburban tenements for Dolls of moderate means; 
kitchens and single apartments for Dolls of the lower classes ; 
capital town residences for Dolls of high estate. Some of these 
establishments were already furnished according to estimate, 
with a view to the convenience of Dolls of limited income; 
others could be fitted on the most expensive scale, at a mo- 
ment’s notice, from whole shelves of chairs and tables, sofas, 
bedsteads, and upholstery. The nobility and gentry and pub- 
lic in general, for whose accommodation these tenements were 
designed, lay, here and there, in baskets, staring straight up 
at the ceiling; but in denoting their degrees in society, and 
confining them to their respective stations (which experience 
shows to be lamentably difficult in real life), the makers of 
these Dolls had far improved on Nature, who is often for- 


192 THE CRICKET ON THE HEARTH 

ward and perverse; for they, not resting on such arbitrary 
marks as satin, cotton-print, and bits of rag, had super- 
added striking personal differences which allowed of no mis- 
take. Thus, the Doll-lady of Distinction had wax limbs of 
perfect symmetry; but only she and her compeers; the next 
grade in the social scale being made of leather; and the next 
of coarse linen stuff. As to the common-people, they had 
just so many matches out of tinder-boxes for their arms and 
legs, and there they were — established in their sphere at once, 
beyond the possibility of getting out of it. 

There were various other samples of his handicraft, be- 
sides Dolls, in Caleb Plummer’s room. There were Noah’s 
Arks, in which the Birds and Beasts were an uncommonly 
tight fit, I assure you; though they could be crammed in, 
anyhow, at the roof, and rattled and shaken into the smallest 
compass. By a bold poetical license, most of these Noah’s 
Arks had knockers on the doors ; inconsistent appendages per- 
haps, as suggestive of morning callers and a Postman, yet 
a pleasant finish to the outside of the building. There were 
scores of melancholy little carts which, when the wheels went 
round, performed most doleful music. Many small fiddles, 
drums, and other instruments of torture; no end of cannon, 
shields, swords, spears, and guns. There were little tumblers 
in red breeches, incessantly swarming up high obstacles of 
red-tape, and coming down, head first on the other side; and 
there were innumerable old gentlemen of respectable, not 
to say venerable appearance, insanely flying over horizontal 
pegs, inserted, for the purpose, in their own street doors. 
There were beasts of all sorts; horses, in particular, of every 
breed, from the spotted barrel on four pegs, with a small 
tippet for a mane, to the thoroughbred rocker on his highest 
mettle. As it would have been hard to count the dozens upon 
dozens of grotesque figures that were ever ready to commit 
all sorts of absurdities on the turning of a handle; so it 
would have been no easy task to mention any human folly, 
vice, or weakness, that had not its type, immediate or remote, 
in Caleb Plummer’s room. And not in an exaggerated form; 
for very little handles will move men and women to as strange 
performances, as any Toy was ever made to undertake. 

In the midst of these objects, Caleb and his daughter 


THE CRICKET ON THE HEARTH 193 

sat at work. The Blind Girl busy as a Doll’s dressmaker; 
Caleb painting and glazing the four pair front of a desirable 
family mansion. 

The care imprinted in the lines of Caleb’s face, and his 
absorbed and dreamy manner, which would have sat well 
on some alchemist or abstruse student, were at first sight 
an odd contrast to his occupation, and the trivialities about 
him. But trivial things, invented and pursued for bread, be- 
come very serious matters of fact; and, apart from this 
consideration, I am not at all prepared to say, myself, that 
if Caleb had been a Lord Chamberlain, or a Member of Parlia- 
ment, or a lawyer, or even a great speculator, he would have 
dealt in toys one whit less whimsical; while I have a very 
great doubt whether they would have been as harmless. 

So you were out in the rain last night, father, in your 
beautiful, new, great-coat,” said Caleb’s daughter. 

“ In my beautiful new great-coat,” answered Caleb, glan- 
cing towards a clothes-line in the room, on which the sack- 
cloth garment previously described, was carefully hung up 
to dry. 

“ How glad I am you bought it, father ! ” 

“ And of such a tailor, too,” said Caleb. “ Quite a fash- 
ionable tailor. It’s too good for me.” 

The Blind Girl rested from her work, and laughed with 
delight. ‘‘Too good, father! What can be too good for 
you ? ” 

“ I’m half ashamed to wear it though,” said Caleb, watch- 
ing the effect of what he said, upon her brightening face; 
“ upon my word. When I hear the boys and people say 
behind me, ‘ Hallo I Here’s a swell ! ’ I don’t know which 
way to look. And when the beggar wouldn’t go away last 
night; and, when I said I was a very common man, said 
‘ No, your Honour ! Bless your Honour, don’t say that ! ’ 
I was quite ashamed. I really felt as if I hadn’t a right to 
wear it.” 

Happy Blind Girl ! How merry she was, in her exultation ! 

“ I see you, father,” she said, clasping her hands, “ as 
plainly, as if I had the eyes I never want when you are 
with me. A blue coat — ” 

“ Bright blue,” said Caleb. 


194 the cricket ON THE HEARTH 

“ Yes, yes ! Bright blue ! ” exclaimed the girl, turning up 
her radiant face; the colour I can just remember in the 
blessed sky ! You told me it was blue before ! A bright blue 
coat—” 

Made loose to the figure,” suggested Caleb. 

“ Yes ! Loose to the figure ! ” cried the Blind Girl, laugh- 
ing heartily ; “ and in it you, dear father, with your merry 
€ye, your smiling face, your free step, and your dark hair: 
looking so young and handsome ! ” 

Hallo ! Hallo ! ” said Caleb. ** I shall be vain, pres- 
ently.” 

I think you are, already,” cried the Blind Girl, pointing 
at him, in her glee. ‘‘ I know you, father ! Ha, ha, ha ! 
I Ve found you out, you see ! ” 

How different the picture in her mind, from Caleb, as he 
sat observing her! She had spoken of his free step. She 
was right in that. For years and years, he never once had 
crossed that threshold at his own slow pace, but with a foot- 
fall counterfeited for her ear; and never had he, when his 
heart was heaviest, forgotten the light tread that was to 
render her so cheerful and courageous ! 

Heaven knows! But I think Caleb’s vague bewilderment 
of manner may have half originated in his having confused 
himself about himself and everything around him, for the 
love of his Blind Daughter. How could the little man be 
otherwise than bewildered, after labouring for so many years 
to destroy his own identity, and that of all the objects that 
had any bearing on it! 

“ There we are,” said Caleb, falling back a pace or two 
to form the better judgment of his work; “as near the real 
thing as six-penn’orth of halfpence is to sixpence. What 
a pity that the whole front of the house opens at once! If 
there was only a staircase in it now, and regular doors to 
the rooms to go in at! But that’s the worst of my calling, 
I’m always deluding myself, and swindling myself.” 

“You are speaking quite softly. You are not tired, fa- 
ther ? ” 

“ Tired,” echoed Caleb, with a great burst of animation, 
“what should tire me, Bertha? I was never tired. What 
does it mean?” 


THE CRICKET ON THE HEARTH 195 

To give the greater force to his words, he checked him- 
self in an involuntary imitation of two half-length stretching 
and yawning figures on the mantel-shelf, who were repre- 
sented as in one eternal state of weariness from the waist 
upwards; and hummed a fragment of a song. It was a 
Bacchanalian song, something about a Sparkling Bowl; and 
he sang it with an assumption of a Devil-may-care voice, that 
made his face a thousand times more meagre and more thought- 
ful than ever. 

'‘What! You’re singing, are you?” said Tackleton, put- 
ting his head in, at the door. “ Go it I / can’t sing.” 

Nobody would have suspected him of it. He hadn’t what 
is generally termed a singing face, by any means. 

“ I can’t afford to sing,” said Tackleton. “ I’m glad you 
can. I hope you can afford to work too. Hardly time for 
both, I should think ? ” 

“ If you could only see him, Bertha, how he’s winking at 
me ! ” whispered Caleb. “ Such a man to joke ! you’d think, if 
you didn’t know him, he was in earnest — wouldn’t you now ! ” 

The Blind Girl smiled, and nodded. 

“ The bird that can sing and won’t sing, must be made 
to sing, they say,” grumbled Tackleton. “ What about the 
owl that can’t sing, and oughtn’t to sing, and will sing; is 
there anything that he should be made to do ? ” 

“ The extent to which he’s winking at this moment ! ” whis- 
pered Caleb to his daughter. “ Oh, my gracious ! ” 

“ Always merry and light-hearted with us ! ” cried the 
smiling Bertha. 

“ Oh, you’re there, are you? ” answered Tackleton. “ Poor 
Idiot!” 

He really did believe she was an Idiot; and he founded 
the belief, I can’t say whether consciously or not, upon her 
being fond of him. 

“Well! and being there, — how are you?” said Tackleton; 
in his grudging way. 

“ Oh ! well ; quite well. And as happy as even you can 
wish me to be. As happy as you would make the whole 
world, if you could ! ” 

“ Poor Idiot ! ” muttered Tackleton. “ No gleam of rea- 
son. Not a gleam ! ” 


196 THE CRICKET ON THE HEARTH 

The Blind Cirl took his hand and kissed it; held it for 
a moment in her own two hands; and laid her cheek against 
it tenderly, before releasing it. There was such unspeakable 
affection and such fervent gratitude in the act, that Tackleton 
himself was moved to say, in a milder growl than usual : 

“ What’s the matter now ? ” 

“ I stood it close beside my pillow when I went to sleep 
last night, and remembered it in my dreams. And when the 
day broke, and the glorious red sun — the red sun, father ? ” 

“ Red in the mornings and the evenings, Bertha,” said poor 
Caleb, with a woeful glance at his employer. 

“ When it rose, and the bright light I almost fear to strike 
myself against in walking, came into the room, I turned the 
little tree towards it, and blessed Heaven for making things 
so precious, and blessed you for sending them to cheer me ! ” 

“Bedlam broke loose!” said Tackleton under his breath. 
“We shall arrive at the strait-waistcoat and mufflers soon. 
We’re getting on ! ” 

Caleb, with his hands hooked loosely in each other, stared 
vacantly before him while his daughter spoke, as if he really 
were uncertain (I believe he was) whether Tackleton had 
done anything to deserve her thanks, or not. If he could 
have been a perfectly free agent, at that moment, required, on 
pain of death, to kick the Toy-merchant, or fall at his feet, 
according to his merits, I believe it would have been an even 
chance which course he would have taken. Yet Caleb knew 
that with his own hands he had brought the little rose-tree 
home for her, so carefully; and that with his own lips he 
had forged the innocent deception which should help to keep 
her from suspecting how much, how very much, he every day 
denied himself, that she might be the happier. 

“Bertha!” said Tackleton, assuming for the nonce, a lit- 
tle cordiality. “ Come here.” 

“Oh! I can come straight to you! You needn’t guide 
me!” she rejoined. 

“Shall I tell you a secret, Bertha?” 

“ If you will ! ” she answered, eagerly. 

How bright the darkened face! How adorned with light, 
the listening head! 

“ This is the day on which little what’s-her-name, the spoilt 


THE CRICKET ON THE HEARTH 197 

child; Peerybingle’s wife; pays her regular visit to you — 
makes her fantastic Pic-Nic here; an’t it?” said Tackle- 
ton, with a strong expression of distaste for the whole con- 
cern. 

'‘Yes,” replied Bertha. “This is the day.” 

“I thought so!” said Tackleton. “I should like to join 
the party.” 

“ Do you hear that, father 1 ” cried the Blind Girl in an 
ecstasy. 

“ Yes, yes, I hear it,” murmured Caleb, with the fixed look 
of a sleep-walker ; “ but I don’t believe it. It’s one of my 
lies, I’ve no doubt.” 

“ You see I — I want to bring the Peerybingles a little 
more into company with May Fielding,” said Tackleton. 
“ I’m going to be married to May.” 

“ Married ! ” cried the Blind Girl, starting from him. 

“ She’s such a confounded Idiot,” muttered Tackleton, 
“ that I was afraid she’d never comprehend me. Ah, Bertha ! 
Married! Church, parson, clerk, beadle, glass-coach, bells, 
breakfast, bride-cake, favours, marrow-bones, cleavers, and all 
the rest of the tomfoolery. A wedding, you know; a wed- 
ding. Don’t you know what a wedding is ? ” 

" I know,” replied the Blind Girl, in a gentle tone. " I 
understand ! ” 

“ Do you ? ” muttered Tackleton. “ It’s more than I ex- 
pected. Well! On that account I want to join the party, 
and to bring May and her mother. I’ll send in a little some- 
thing or other, before the afternoon. A cold leg of mutton, 
or some comfortable trifle of that sort. You’ll expect me?” 

“ Yes,” she answered. 

She had dropped her head, and turned away ; and so stood, 
with her hands crossed, musing. 

“ I don’t think you will,” muttered Tackleton, looking 
at her ; “ for you seem to have forgotten all about it, al- 
ready. Caleb ! ” 

“I may venture to say I’m here, I suppose,” thought 
Caleb. “Sir!” 

“ Take care she don’t forget what I’ve been saying to her.” 

" She never forgets,” returned Caleb. “ It’s one of the few 
things she an’t clever in.” 


198 THE CRICKET ON THE HEARTH 

“ Every man thinks his own geese swans,” observed the 
Toy-merchant, with a shrug. “ Poor devil ! ” 

Having delivered himself of which remark, with infinite 
contempt, old Gruff and Tackleton withdrew. 

Bertha remained where he had left her, lost in meditation. 
The gaiety had vanished from her downcast face, and it 
was very sad. Three or four times, she shook her head, as if 
bewailing some remembrance or some loss, but her sorrowful 
reflections found no vent in words. 

It was not until Caleb had been occupied, some time, in 
yoking a team of horses to a waggon by the summary proc- 
ess of nailing the harness to the vital parts of their bodies, 
that she drew near to his working-stool and sitting down 
beside him, said: 

“ Father, I am lonely in the dark. I want my eyes : my 
patient, willing eyes.” 

“ Here they are,” said Caleb. ** Always ready. They are 
more yours than mine, Bertha, any hour in the four and 
twenty. What shall your eyes do for you, dear?” 

“ Look round the room, father.” 

All right,” said Caleb. “ No sooner said than done, 
Bertha.” 

“ Tell me about it.” 

It’s much the same as usual,” said Caleb. Homely, 
but very snug. The gay colours on the walls ; the bright 
flowers on the plates and dishes; the shining wood, where 
there are beams or panels ; the general cheerfulness and 
neatness of the building; make it very pretty.” 

Cheerful and neat it was wherever Bertha’s hands could 
busy themselves. But nowhere else were cheerfulness and 
neatness possible, in the old crazy shed which Caleb’s fancy 
so transformed. 

“You have your working dress on, and are not so gallant 
as when you wear the handsome coat?” said Bertha, touch- 
ing him. 

“ Not quite so gallant,” answered Caleb. “ Pretty brisk 
though.” 

“ Father,” said the Blind Girl, drawing close to his side, 
and stealing one arm round his neck. “ Tell me something 
about May. She is very fair?” 


THE CRICKET ON THE HEARTH 199 

** She is indeed/’ said Caleb. And she was indeed. It 
was quite a rare thing to Caleb, not to have to draw on his 
invention. 

‘‘ Her hair is dark,” said Bertha, pensively, ‘‘ darker than 
mine. Her voice is sweet and musical, I know. I have often 
loved to hear it. Her shape — ” 

“ There’s not a Doll’s in all the room to equal it,” said 
Caleb. “ And her eyes ! ” — 

He stopped; for Bertha had drawn closer round his neck; 
and, from the arm that clung about him, came a warning 
pressure which he understood too well. 

He coughed a moment, hammered for a moment, and then 
fell back upon the song about the Sparkling Bowl; his in- 
fallible resource in all such difficulties. 

“ Our friend, father ; our benefactor. I am never tired 
you know of hearing about him. — Now was I, ever?” she 
said, hastily. 

“Of course not,” answered Caleb. “ And with reason.” 

“ Ah ! With how much reason ! ” cried the Blind Girl. 
With such fervency, that Caleb, though his motives were so 
pure, could not endure to meet her face; but dropped his 
eyes, as if she could have read in them his innocent de- 
ceit. 

“ Then tell me again about him, dear father,” said Bertha. 
“ Many times again ! His face is benevolent, kind, and ten- 
der. Honest and true, I am sure it is. The manly heart 
that tries to cloak all favours with a show of roughness and 
unwillingness, beats in its every look and glance.” 

“ And makes it noble,” added Caleb in his quiet despera- 
tion. 

“ And makes it noble ! ” cried the Blind Girl. “ He is older 
than May, father.” 

“ Ye-es,” said Caleb, reluctantly. “ He’s a little older than 
May. But that don’t signify.” 

“Oh, father, yes! To be his patient companion in in- 
firmity and age; to be his gentle nurse in sickness, and his 
constant friend in suffering and sorrow ; to know no weariness 
in working for his sake; to watch him, tend him; sit beside 
his bed and talk to him, awake; and pray for him asleep; 
what privileges these would be! What opportunities for 


200 THE CRICKET ON THE HEARTH 


proving all her truth and her devotion to him! Would she 
do all this, dear father?” 

“ No doubt of it,” said Caleb. 

“I love her, father; I can love her from my soul!” ex- 
claimed the Blind Girl. And saying so, she laid her poor 
blind face on Caleb’s shoulder, and so wept and wept, that 
he was almost sorry to have brought that tearful happiness 
upon her. 

In the mean time, there had been a pretty sharp commotion 
at John Peerybingle’s ; for little Mrs. Peerybingle naturally 
couldn’t think of going anywhere without the Baby; and to 
get the Baby under weigh, took time. Not that there was 
much of the Baby: speaking of it as a thing of weight and 
measure : but there was a vast deal to do about and about it, 
and it all had to be done by easy stages. For instance : when 
the Baby was got, by hook and by crook, to a certain point 
of dressing, and you might have rationally supposed that an- 
other touch or two would finish him off, and turn him out a 
tip-top Baby challenging the world, he was unexpectedly ex- 
tinguished in a flannel cap, and hustled off to bed; where he 
simmered (so to speak) between two blankets for the best 
part of an hour. From this state of inaction he was then 
recalled, shining very much and roaring violently, to partake 
of — well! I would rather say, if you’ll permit me to speak 
generally — of a slight repast. After which, he went to sleep 
again. Mrs. Peerybingle took advantage of this interval, to 
make herself as smart in a small way as ever you saw any- 
body in all your life ; and, during the same short truce. Miss 
Slowboy insinuated herself into a spencer of a fashion so 
surprising and ingenious, that it had no connection with her- 
self, or anything else in the universe, but was a shrunken, 
dog’s-eared, independent fact, pursuing its lonely course with- 
out the least regard to anybody. By this time, the Baby, 
being all alive again, was invested, by the united efforts of 
Mrs. Peerybingle and Miss Slowboy, with a cream-coloured 
mantle for its body, and a sort of nankeen raised-pie for 
its head; and so in course of time they all three got down 
to the door, where the old horse had already taken more 
than the full value of his day’s toll out of Turnpike Trust, 
by tearing up the road with his impatient autographs — and 


THE CRICKET ON THE HEARTH 201 


whence Boxer might be dimly seen in the remote perspective, 
standing looking back, and tempting him to come on without 
orders. 

As to a chair, or anything of that kind for helping Mrs. 
Peerybingle into the cart, you know very little of John, I 
flatter myself, if you think that was necessary. Before you 
could have seen him lift her from the round, there she was 
in her place, fresh and rosy, saying, John ! How can you ! 
Think of Tilly ! 

If I might be allowed to mention a young lady’s legs on 
any terms, I would observe of Miss Slowboy’s that there was 
a fatality about them which rendered them singularly liable 
to be grazed; and that she never effected the smallest ascent 
or descent, without recording the circumstance upon them 
with a notch, as Robinson Crusoe marked the days upon his 
wooden calendar. But as this might be considered ungenteel. 
I’ll think of it. 

‘‘John? You’ve got the basket with the Veal and 
Ham-Pie and things; and the bottles of Beer?” said Dot. 
“If you haven’t, you must turn round again, this very min- 
ute.” 

“ You’re a nice little article,” returned the Carrier, “ to be 
talking about turning round, after keeping me a full quarter 
of an hour behind my time.” 

“ I am sorry for it, John,” said Dot in a great bustle, “ but 
I really could not think of going to Bertha’s — I would not 
do it, John, on any account — without the Veal and Ham-Pie 
and things, and the bottles of Beer. Way!” 

This monosyllable was addressed to the horse, who didn’t 
mind it at all. 

“ Oh, do way, John ! ” said Mrs. Peerybingle. “ Please ! ” 

“ It’ll be time enough to do that,” returned John, “ when 
I begin to leave things behind me. The basket’s here, safe 
enough.” 

“ What a hard-hearted monster you must be, John, not to 
have said so, at once, and save me such a turn! I declared 
I wouldn’t go to Bertha’s without the Veal and Ham-Pie and 
things, and the bottles of Beer, for any money. Regularly 
once a fortnight ever since we have been married, John, have 
we made our little Pic-Nic there. If anything was to go 


202 THE CRICKET ON THE HEARTH 


wrong with it, I should almost think we were never to be 
lucky again.” 

“ It was a kind thought in the first instance,” said the Car- 
rier ; ‘‘ and I honour you for it, little woman.” 

“ My dear John,” replied Dot, turning very red. “ Don’t 
talk about honouring me. Good gracious ! ” 

“ By the bye — ” observed the Carrier. That old gentle- 
man,” — 

Again so visibly, and instantly embarrassed. 

“ He’s an odd fish,” said the Carrier, looking straight along 
the road before them. “ I can’t make him out. I don’t be- 
lieve there’s any harm in him.” 

“ None at all. I’m — I’m sure there’s none at all.” 

'"Yes?” said the Carrier, with his eyes attracted to her 
face by the great earnestness of her manner. I am glad 
you feel so certain of it, because it’s a confirmation to me. 
It’s curious that he should have taken into his head to ask 
leave to go on lodging with us; an’t it? Things come about 
so strangely.” 

“So very strangely,” she rejoined in a low voice: scarcely 
audible. 

“ However, he’s a good-natured old gentleman,” said John, 
“ and pays as a gentleman, and I think his word is to be relied 
upon, like a gentleman’s. I had quite a long talk with him 
this morning: he can hear me better already, he says, as he 
gets more used to my voice. He told me a great deal about 
himself, and I told him a good deal about myself, and a rare 
lot of questions he asked me. I gave him information about 
my having two beats, you know, in my business; one day to 
the right from our house and back again ; another day to the 
left from our house and back again (for he’s a stranger and 
don’t know the names of places about here) ; and he seemed 
quite pleased. ‘ Why, then I shall be returning home to- 
night your way,’ he says, ‘ when I thought you’d be coming in 
an exactly opposite direction. That’s capital. I may trouble 
you for another lift perhaps, but I’ll engage not to fall so 
sound asleep again.’ He was sound asleep, sure-ly! — Dot! 
what are you thinking of ? ” 

“Thinking of, John? I — I was listening to you.” 

“ Oh ! That’s all right ! ” said the honest Carrier. “ I was 


THE CRICKET ON THE HEARTH 203 

afraid, from the look of your face, that I had gone rambling 
on so long, as to set you thinking about something else. I 
was very near it. I’ll be bound.” 

Dot making no reply, they jogged on, for some little time, 
in silence. But it was not easy to remain silent very long 
in John Peerybingle’s cart, for everybody on the road had 
something to say ; though it might only be “ How are you ! ” 
and indeed it was very often nothing else, still, to give that 
back again in the right spirit of cordiality, required, not merely 
a nod and a smile, but as wholesome an action of the lungs 
withal, as a long-winded Parliamentary speech. Sometimes, 
passengers on foot, or horseback, plodded on a little way be- 
side the cart, for the express purpose of having a chat; and 
then there was a great deal to be said, on both sides. 

Then, Boxer gave occasion to more good-natured recogni- 
tions of and by the Carrier, than half-a-dozen Christians could 
have done! Everybody knew him, all along the road — espe- 
cially the fowls and pigs, who when they saw him approach- 
ing, with his body all on one side, and his ears pricked up 
inquisitively, and that knob of a tail making the most of itself 
in the air, immediately withdrew into remote back settlements, 
without waiting for the honour of a nearer acquaintance. He 
had business everywhere ; going down all the turnings, looking 
into all the wells, bolting in and out of all the cottages, dashing 
into the midst of all the Dame-Schools, fluttering all the 
pigeons, magnifying the tails of all the cats, and trotting into 
the public-houses like a regular customer. Wherever he went, 
somebody or other might have been heard to cry, Hallo ! 
Here’s Boxer ! ” and out came that somebody forthwith, ac- 
companied by at least two or three other somebodies, to give 
John Peerybingle and his pretty wife. Good Day. 

The packages and parcels for the errand cart, were nu- 
merous; and there were many stoppages to take them in and 
give them out ; which were not by any means the worst parts 
of the journey. Some people were so full of expectation 
about their parcels, and other people were so full of wonder 
about their parcels, and other people were so full of inex- 
haustible directions about their parcels, and John had such a 
lively interest in all the parcels, that it was as good as a play. 
Likewise, there were articles to carry, which required to be 


204 THE CRICKET ON THE HEARTH 

considered and discussed, and in reference to the adjustment 
and disposition of which, councils had to be holden by the 
Carrier and the senders: at which Boxer usually assisted, in 
short fits of the closest attention, and long fits of tearing round 
and round the assembled sages and barking himself hoarse. 
Of all these little incidents. Dot was the amused and open-eyed 
spectatress from her chair in the cart; and as she sat there, 
looking on : a charming little portrait framed to admiration by 
the tilt: there was no lack of nudgings and glancings and 
whisperings and envyings among the younger men, I promise 
you. And this delighted John the Carrier, beyond measure; 
for he was proud to have his little wife admired ; knowing that 
she didn’t mind it — that, if anything, she rather liked it per- 
haps. 

The trip was a little foggy, to be sure, in the January 
weather; and was raw and cold. But who cared for such 
trifles? Not Dot, decidedly. Not Tilly Slowboy, for she 
deemed sitting in a cart, on any terms, to be the highest point 
of human joys; the crowning circumstances of earthly hopes. 
Not the Baby, I’ll be sworn ; for it’s not in Baby nature to be 
warmer or more sound asleep, though its capacity is great in 
both respects, than that blessed young Peerybingle was, all the 
way. 

You couldn’t see very far in the fog, of course; but you 
could see a great deal, oh, a great deal ! It’s astonishing how 
much you may see, in a thicker fog than that, if you will only 
take the trouble to look for it. Why, even to sit watching for 
the Fairy-rings in the fields, and for the patches of hoar-frost 
still lingering in the shade, near hedges and by trees, was a 
pleasant occupation: to make no mention of the unexpected 
shapes in which the trees themselves came starting out of the 
mist, and glided into it again. The hedges were tangled and 
bare, and waved a multitude of blighted garlands in the wind ; 
but there was no discouragement in this. It was agreeable to 
contemplate ; for it made the fireside warmer in possession, and 
the summer greener in expectancy. The river looked chilly; 
but it was in motion, and moving at a good pace; which was 
a great point. The canal was rather slow and torpid; that 
must be admitted. Never mind. It would freeze the sooner 
when the frost set fairly in, and then there would be skating. 


THE CRICKET ON THE HEARTH 205 

and sliding; and the heavy old barges, frozen up somewhere, 
near a wharf, would smoke their rusty iron chimney-pipes all 
day, and have a lazy time of it. 

In one place, there was a great mound of weeds or stubble 
burning; and they watched the fire, so white in the daytime, 
flaring through the fog, with only here and there a dash of red 
in it, until, in consequence as she observed of the smoke ” get- 
ting up her nose,” Miss Slowboy choked — she could do any- 
thing of that sort, on the smallest provocation — and woke the 
Baby, who wouldn’t go to sleep again. But Boxer, who was 
in advance some quarter of a mile or so, had already passed the 
outposts of the town, and gained the corner of the street where 
Caleb and his daughter lived; and long before they reached 
the door, he and the Blind Girl were on the pavement waiting 
to receive them. 

Boxer, by the way, made certain delicate distinctions of his 
own, in his communication with Bertha, which persuade me 
fully that he knew her to be blind. He never sought to attract 
her attention by looking at her, as he often did with other 
people, but touched her, invariably. What experience he could 
ever have had of blind people or blind dogs, I don’t know. He 
had never lived with a blind master; nor had Mr. Boxer the 
elder, nor Mrs. Boxer, nor any of his respectable family on 
either side, even been visited with blindness, that I am aware 
of. He may have found it out for himself, perhaps, but he 
had got hold of it somehow; and therefore he had hold of 
Bertha too, by the skirt, and kept hold, until Mrs. Peerybingle 
and the Baby, and Miss Slowboy, and the basket, were all got 
safely within doors. 

May Fielding was already come ; and so was her mother — 
a little querulous chip of an old lady with a peevish face, who, 
in right of having preserved a waist like a bedpost, was sup- 
posed to be a most transcendent figure; and who, in conse- 
quence of having once been better off, or labouring under an im- 
pression that she might have been, if something had happened 
which never did happen, and seemed to have never been par- 
ticularly likely to come to pass — ^but it’s all the same — was 
very genteel and patronising indeed. Gruff and Tackleton was 
also there, doing the agreeable, with the evident sensation of 
being as perfectly at home, and as unquestionably in his own 


2o6 the cricket on THE HEARTH 


element, as a fresh young salmon on the top of the Great 
Pyramid. 

“ May ! My dear old friend ! ” cried Dot, running up to 
meet her. What a happiness to see you ! ” 

Her old friend was, to the full, as hearty and as glad as she ; 
and it really was, if you’ll believe me, quite a pleasant sight to 
see them embrace. Tackleton was a man of taste, beyond all 
question. May was very pretty. 

You know sometimes, when you are used to a pretty face, 
how, when it comes into contact and comparison with another 
pretty face, it seems for the moment to be homely and faded, 
and hardly to deserve the high opinion you have had of it. 
Now, this was not at all the case, either with Dot or May; for 
May’s face set off Dot’s, and Dot’s face set off May’s, so 
naturally and agreeably, that, as John Peerybingle was very 
near saying when he came into the room, they ought to have 
been born sisters — which was the only improvement you could 
have suggested. 

Tackleton had brought his leg of mutton, and, wonderful to 
relate, a tart besides — but we don’t mind a little dissipation 
when our brides are in the case; we don’t get married every 
day — and in addition to these dainties, there were the Veal and 
Ham-Pie, and “things,” as Mrs. Peerybingle called them; 
which were chiefly nuts and oranges, and cakes, and such 
small deer. When the repast was set forth on the board, 
flanked by Caleb’s contribution, which was a great wooden 
bowl of smoking potatoes (he was prohibited, by solemn com- 
pact, from producing any other viands), Tackleton led his 
intended mother-in-law to the Post of Honour. For the better 
gracing of this place at the high Festival, the majestic old Soul 
had adorned herself with a cap, calculated to inspire the 
thoughtless with sentiments of awe. She also wore her gloves. 
But let us be genteel, or die ! 

Caleb sat next his daughter; Dot and her old schoolfellow 
were side by side ; the good Carrier took care of the bottom of 
the table. Miss Slowboy was isolated, for the time being, 
from every article of furniture but the chair she sat on, that 
she might have nothing else to knock the Baby’s head against. 

As Tilly stared about her at the dolls and toys, they stared 
at her and at the company. The venerable old gentlemen at 


THE CRICKET ON THE HEARTH 207 

the street doors (who were all in full action) showed especial 
interest in the party ; pausing occasionally before leaping, as if 
they were listening to the conversation; and then plunging 
wildly over and over, a great many times, without halting for 
breath, — as in a frantic state of delight with the whole pro- 
ceedings. 

Certainly, if these old gentlemen were inclined to have a 
fiendish joy in the contemplation of Tackleton’s discomfiture, 
they had good reason to be satisfied. Tackleton couldn’t get 
on at all; and the more cheerful his intended bride became in 
Dot’s society, the less he liked it, though he had brought them 
together for that purpose. For he was a regular Dog in the 
Manger, was Tackleton; and when they laughed, and he 
couldn’t, he took it into his head, immediately, that they must 
be laughing at him. 

“Ah, May!” said Dot. “Dear, dear, what changes! To 
talk of those merry school-days makes one young again.” 

“ Why, you an’t particularly old, at any time ; are you ? ” 
said Tackleton. 

“ Look at my sober plodding husband there,” returned Dot. 
“ He adds twenty years to my age at least. Don’t you, 
John?” 

“ Forty,” John replied. 

“ How many you’ll add to May’s, I’m sure I don’t know,” 
said Dot, laughing. “ But she can’t be much less than a 
hundred years of age on her next birthday.” 

“Ha, ha!” laughed Tackleton. Hollow as a drum, that 
laugh though. And he looked as if he could have twisted Dot’s 
neck : comfortably. 

“ Dear, dear ! ” said Dot. “ Only to remember how we 
used to talk, at school, about the husbands we would choose. 
I don’t know how young, and how handsome, and how gay, 
and how lively, mine was not to be! And as to May’s — ! 
Ah, dear! I don’t know whether to laugh or cry, when I 
think what silly girls we were.” 

May seemed to know which to do; for the colour flashed 
into her face, and tears stood in her eyes. 

“ Even the very persons themselves — real live young men — 
were fixed on sometimes,” said Dot. “ We little thought how 
things would come about. I never fixed on John I’m sure; 


2o8 the cricket on THE HEARTH 


I never so much as thought of him. And if I had told you, 
you were ever to be married to Mr. Tackleton, why you’d have 
slapped me. Wouldn’t you, May? ” 

Though May didn’t say yes, she certainly didn’t say no, or 
express no, by any means. 

Tackleton laughed — quite shouted, he laughed so loud John 
Peerybingle laughed too, in his ordinary good-natured and con- 
tented manner; but his was a mere whisper of a laugh, to 
Tackleton’s. 

“ You couldn’t help yourselves, for all that. You couldn’t 
resist us, you see,” said Tackleton. “ Here we are ! Here we 
are ! Where are your gay young bridegrooms now ! ” 

“ Some of them are dead,” said Dot ; “ and some of them 
forgotten. Some of them, if they could stand among us at this 
moment, would not believe we were the same creatures ; would 
not believe that what they saw and heard was real, and we 
could forget them so. No! they would not believe one word 
of it!” 

Why, Dot ! ” exclaimed the Carrier. “ Little woman ! ” 
She had spoken with such earnestness and fire, that she 
stood in need of some recalling to herself, without doubt. 
Her husband’s check was very gentle, for he merely interfered, 
as he supposed, to shield old Tackleton ; but it proved effectual, 
for she stopped, and said no more. There was an uncommon 
agitation, even in her silence, which the wary Tackleton, who 
had brought his half-shut eye to bear upon her, noted closely ; 
and remembered to some purpose too, as you will see. 

May uttered no word, good or bad, but sat quite still, with 
her eyes cast down ; and made no sign of interest in what had 
passed. The good lady her mother now interposed : observing, 
in the first instance, that girls were girls, and bygones bygones, 
and that so long as young people were young and thoughtless, 
they would probably conduct themselves like young and 
thoughtless persons : with two or three other positions of a no 
less sound and incontrovertible character. She then remarked, 
in a devout spirit, that she thanked Heaven she had always 
found in her daughter May, a dutiful and obedient child; for 
which she took no credit to herself, though she had every 
reason to believe it was entirely owing to herself. With regard 
to Mr. Tackleton she said. That he was in a moral point of 


THE CRICKET ON THE HEARTH 209 

view an undeniable individual ; and That he was in an eligible 
point of view a son-in-law to be desired, no one in their senses 
could doubt. (She was very emphatic here.) With regard 
to the family into which he was so soon about, after some 
solicitation, to be admitted, she believed Mr. Tackleton knew 
that, although reduced in purse, it had some pretensions to 
gentility ; and if certain circumstances, not wholly unconnected, 
she would go so far as to say, with the Indigo Trade, but to 
which she would not more particularly refer, had happened 
differently, it might perhaps have been in possession of Wealth. 
She then remarked that she would not allude to the past, and 
would not mention that her daughter had for some time re- 
jected the suit of Mr. Tackleton; and that she would not say a 
great many other things which she did say, at great length. 
Finally, she delivered it as the general result of her obser- 
vation and experience, that those marriages in which there was 
least of what was romantically and sillily called love, were 
always the happiest ; and that she anticipated the greatest pos- 
sible amount of bliss — not rapturous bliss ; but the solid, steady- 
going article — from the approaching nuptials. She concluded 
by informing the company that to-morrow was the day she had 
lived for, expressly; and that when it was over, she would 
desire nothing better than to be packed up and disposed of, 
in any genteel place of burial. 

As these remarks were quite unanswerable: which is the 
happy property of all remarks that are sufficiently wide of the 
purpose: they changed the current of the conversation, and 
diverted the general attention to the Veal and Ham-Pie, the 
cold mutton, the potatoes, and the tart. In order that the 
bottled beer might not be slighted, John Peerybingle proposed 
To-morrow: the Wedding-Day; and called upon them to drink 
a bumper to it, before he proceeded on his journey. 

For you ought to know that he only rested there, and gave 
the old horse a bait. He had to go some four or five miles 
farther on ; and when he returned in the evening, he called for 
Dot, and took another rest on his way home. This was the 
order of the day on all the Pic-Nic occasions, and had been, 
ever since their institution. 

There were two persons present, beside the bride and bride- 
groom elect, who did but indifferent honour to the toast. One 


210 THE CRICKET ON THE HEARTH 


of these was Dot, too flushed and discomposed to adapt herself 
to any small occurrence of the moment ; the other, Bertha, who 
rose up hurriedly, before the rest, and left the table. 

''Good-bye!'' said stout John Peerybingle, pulling on his 
dreadnought coat. " I shall be back at the old time. Good- 
bye all I ” 

" Good-bye, John," returned Caleb. 

He seemed to say it by rote, and to wave his hand in the 
same unconscious manner ; for he stood observing Bertha with 
an anxious wondering face, that never altered its expression. 

" Good-bye, young shaver! " said the jolly Carrier, bending 
down to kiss the child; which Tilly Slowboy, now intent upon 
her knife and fork, had deposited asleep (and strange to say, 
without damage) in a little cot of Bertha’s furnishing; 
"good-bye! Time will come, I suppose, when you'W turn 
out into the cold, my little friend, and leave your old father 
to enjoy his pipe and his rheumatics in the chimney-corner, 
eh ? Where’s Dot ? " 

"I’m here, John!" she said, starting. 

" Come, come ! " returned the Carrier, clapping his sounding 
hands. " Where’s the pipe ? ’’ 

" I quite forgot the pipe, John." 

Forgot the pipe ! Was such a wonder ever heard of ! She ! 
Forgot the pipe! 

" I’ll — I’ll fill it directly. It’s soon done." 

But it was not so soon done, either. It lay in the usual 
place ; the Carrier’s dreadnought pocket ; with the little pouch, 
her own work, from which she was used to fill it ; but her hand 
shook so, that she entangled it (and yet her hand was small 
enough to have come out easily, I am sure), and bungled 
terribly. The filling of the pipe and lighting it; those little 
offices in which I have commended her discretion, if you recol- 
lect; were vilely done, from first to last. During the whole 
process, Tackleton stood looking on maliciously with the half- 
closed eye; which, whenever it met hers — or caught it, for it 
can hardly be said to have ever met another eye : rather being 
a kind of trap to snatch it up — augmented her confusion in a 
most remarkable degree. 

" Why, what a clumsy Dot you are, this afternoon ! ’’ said 
John. " I could have done it better myself, I verily believe I " 


THE CRICKET ON THE HEARTH 2u 

With these good-natured words, he strode away ; and 
presently was heard, in company with Boxer, and the old horse, 
and the cart, making lively music down the road. What time 
the dreamy Caleb still stood, watching his Blind Daughter, with 
the same expression on his face. 

“Bertha!” said Caleb, softly. “What has happened? 
How changed you are, my darling, in a few hours — since this 
morning. You silent and dull all day! What is it? Tell 
me!” 

“ Oh, father, father ! ” cried the Blind Girl, bursting into 
tears. “ Oh, my hard, hard fate ! ” 

Caleb drew his hand across his eyes before he answered her. 

“ But think how cheerful and how happy you have been, 
Bertha ! How good, and how much loved, by many people.” 

“ That strikes me to the heart, dear father ! Always so 
mindful of me ! Always so kind to me ! ” 

Caleb was very much perplexed to understand her. 

“To be — to be blind, Bertha, my poor dear,” he faltered, 
“ is a great affliction ; but — ” 

“ I have never felt it ! ” cried the Blind Girl. “ I have never 
felt it, in its fulness. Never! I have sometimes wished that 
I could see you, or could see him ; only once, dear father ; only 
for one little minute; that I might know what it is I treasure 
up,” she laid her hands upon her breast, “ and hold here ! 
That I might be sure I have it right! And sometimes (but 
then I was a child) I have wept, in my prayers at night, to 
think that when your images ascended from my heart to 
Heaven, they might not be the true resemblance of yourselves. 
But I have never had these feelings long. They have passed 
away and left me tranquil and contented.” 

“ And they will again,” said Caleb. 

“ But, father ! Oh, my good, gentle father, bear with me, 
if I am wicked ! ” said the Blind Girl. “ This is not the sor- 
row that so weighs me down ! ” 

Her father could not choose but let his moist eyes overflow ; 
she was so earnest and pathetic. But he did not understand 
her, yet. 

“ Bring her to me,” said Bertha. “ I cannot hold it closed 
and shut within myself. Bring her to me, father! ” 

She knew he hesitated, and said, “ May. Bring May ! ” 


212 THE CRICKET ON THE HEARTH 


May heard the mention of her name, and coming quietly 
towards her, touched her on the arm. The Blind Girl turned 
immediately, and held her by both hands. 

“ Look into my face. Dear heart, Sweet heart ! '' said Bertha. 
“ Read it with your beautiful eyes, and tell me if the Truth is 
written on it.” 

“ Dear Bertha, yes ! ” 

The Blind Girl, still upturning the blank sightless face, down 
which the tears were coursing fast, addressed her in these 
words : 

“ There is not, in my Soul, a wish or thought that is not for 
your good, bright May"! There is not, in my Soul, a grateful 
recollection stronger than the deep remembrance which is 
stored there, of the many times when, in the full pride of 
Sight and Beauty, you have had consideration for Blind Bertha, 
even when we two were children, or when Bertha was as much 
a child as ever blindness can be! Every blessing on your 
head! Light upon your happy course ! Not the less, my dear 
May ; ” and she drew towards her, in a closer grasp ; not the 
less, my bird, because, to-day, the knowledge that you are to 
be His wife has wrung my heart almost to breaking! Father, 
May, Mary ! oh forgive me that it is so, for the sake of all he 
has done to relieve the weariness of my dark life : and for the 
sake of the belief you have in me, when I call Heaven to 
witness that I could not wish him married to a wife more 
worthy of his Goodness ! ” 

While speaking, she had released May Fielding’s hands, and 
clasped her garments in an attitude of mingled supplication and 
love. Sinking lower and lower down, as she proceeded in her 
strange confession, she dropped at last at the feet of her 
friend, and hid her blind face in the folds of her dress. 

“ Great Power ! ” exclaimed her father, smitten at one blow 
with the truth, have I deceived her from her cradle, but to 
break her heart at last ! ” 

It was well for all of them that Dot, that beaming, useful, 
busy little Dot — for such she was, whatever faults she had, and 
however you may learn to hate her, in good time — it was well 
for all of them, I say, that she was there : or where this would 
have ended, it were hard to tell. But Dot, recovering her 


THE CRICKET ON THE HEARTH 213 

self-possession, interposed, before May could reply, or Caleb 
say another word. 

“ Come come, dear Bertha ! come away with me ! Give her 
your arm. May. So! How composed she is, you see, al- 
ready, and how good it is of her to mind us,” said the cheery 
little woman, kissing her upon the forehead. “ Come away, 
dear Bertha! Come! and here’s her good father will come 
with her; won’t you, Caleb? To — be — sure!” 

Well, well ! she was a noble little Dot in such things, and it 
must have been an obdurate nature that could have withstood 
her influence. When she had got poor Caleb and his Bertha 
away, that they might comfort and console each other, as she 
knew they only could, she presently came bouncing back, — the 
saying is, as fresh as any daisy ; I say fresher — to mount guard 
over that bridling little piece of consequence in the cap and 
gloves, and prevent the dear old creature from making dis- 
coveries. 

‘‘ So bring me the precious Baby, Tilly,” said she, drawing 
a chair to the fire ; “ and while I have it in my lap, here’s Mrs. 
Fielding, Tilly, will tell me all about the management of Babies, 
and put me right in twenty points where I’m as wrong as can 
be. Won’t you, Mrs. Fielding? ” 

Not even the Welsh Giant, who according to the popular 
expression, was so slow ” as to perform a fatal surgical oper- 
ation upon himself, in emulation of a juggling-trick achieved 
by his arch-enemy at breakfast-time; not even he fell half so 
readily into the Snare prepared for him, as the old lady did 
into this artful Pitfall. The fact of Tackleton having walked 
out ; and furthermore, of two or three people having been talk- 
ing together at a distance, for two minutes, leaving her to her 
own resources ; was quite enough to have put her on her dig- 
nity, and the bewailment of that mysterious convulsion in the 
Indigo Trade, for four-and-twenty hours. But this becom- 
ing deference to her experience, on the part of the young 
mother, was so irresistible, that after a short affectation of 
humility, she began to enlighten her with the best grace in 
the world; and sitting bolt upright before the wicked Dot, 
she did in half an hour, deliver more infallible domestic 
recipes and precepts, than would (if acted on) have utterly 


214 THE CRICKET ON THE HEARTH 

destroyed and done up that Young Peerybingle, though he 
had been an infant Samson. 

To change the theme, Dot did a little needlework — she 
carried the contents of a whole workbox in her pocket; how- 
ever she contrived it, I don’t know — then did a little nursing; 
then a little more needlework ; then had a little whispering chat 
with May, while the old lady dozed; and so in little bits of 
bustle, which was quite her manner always, found it a very 
short afternoon. Then, as it grew dark, and as it was a solemn 
part of this Institution of the Pic-Nic that she should perform 
all Bertha’s household tasks, she trimmed the fire, and swept 
the hearth, and set the tea-board out, and drew the curtain, and 
lighted a candle. Then, she played an air or two on a rude 
kind of harp, which Caleb had contrived for Bertha; and 
played them very well ; for Nature had made her delicate little 
ear as choice a one for music as it would have been for jewels, 
if she had had any to wear. By this time it was the established 
hour for having tea ; and Tackleton came back again, to share 
the meal, and spend the evening. 

Caleb and Bertha had returned some time before, and Caleb 
had sat down to his afternoon’s work. But he couldn’t settle 
to it, poor fellow, being anxious and remorseful for his daugh- 
ter. It was touching to see him sitting idle on his working- 
stool, regarding her so wistfully ; and always saying in his face, 
“ Have I deceived her from her cradle, but to break her heart ! ” 

When it was night, and tea was done, and Dot had nothing 
more to do in washing up the cups and saucers ; in a word — 
for I must come to it, and there is no use in putting it off — 
when the time drew nigh for expecting the Carrier’s return in 
every sound of distant wheels ; her manner changed again ; her 
colour came and went; and she was very restless. Not as 
good wives are, when listening for their husbands. No, no, no. 
It was another sort of restlessness from that. 

Wheels heard. A horse’s feet. The barking of a dog. The 
gradual approach of all the sounds. The scratching paw of 
Boxer at the door ! 

“ Whose step is that ! ” cried Bertha, starting up. 

“ Whose step ? ” returned the Carrier, standing in the portal, 
with his brown face ruddy as a winter berry from the keen 
night air. “ Why, mine.” 


THE CRICKET ON THE HEARTH 215 

The other step,” said Bertha. ** The man’s tread behind 
” 

“ She is not to be deceived,” observed the Carrier, laughing. 

Come along, Sir. You’ll be welcome, never fear! ” 

He spoke in a loud tone; and as he spoke, the deaf old 
gentleman entered. 

‘‘ He’s not so much a stranger, that you haven’t seen him 
once, Caleb,” said the Carrier. “ You’ll give him house-room 
till we go? ” 

'‘Oh, surely, John; and take it as an honour.” 

“ He’s the best company on earth, to talk secrets in,” said 
John. “ I have reasonable good lungs, but he tries ’em, I 
can tell you. Sit down. Sir. All friends here, and glad to 
see you I ” 

When he had imparted this assurance, in a voice that amply 
corroborated what he had said about his lungs, he added in 
his natural tone, “ A chair in the chimney-corner, and leave to 
sit quite silent and look pleasantly about him, is all he cares for. 
He’s easily pleased.” 

Bertha had been listening intently. She called Caleb to her 
side, when he had set the chair, and asked him, in a low voice, 
to describe their visitor. When he had done so (truly now; 
with scrupulous fidelity), she moved, for the first time since 
he had come in; and sighed; and seemed to have no further 
interest concerning him. 

The Carrier was in high spirits, good fellow that he was ; and 
fonder of his little wife than ever. 

“ A clumsy Dot she was, this afternoon ! ” he said, encircling 
her with his rough arm, as she stood, removed from the rest; 
“ and yet I like her somehow. See yonder. Dot ! ” 

He pointed to the old man. She looked down. I think she 
trembled. 

“ He’s — ha, ha, ha ! — he’s full of admiration for you ! ” 
said the Carrier. “ Talked of nothing else, the whole way 
here. Why, he’s a brave old boy. I like him for it ! ” 

“ I wish he had had a better subject, John; ” she said, with 
an uneasy glance about the room; at Tackleton especially. 

“A better subject!” cried the jovial John. “There’s no 
such thing. Come ! off with the great-coat, off with the thick 
shawl, off with the heavy wrappers ! and a cosy half-hour by 


2i6 the cricket on THE HEARTH 

the fire ! My humble service, Mistress. A game at cribbage, 
you and I ? That’s hearty. The cards and board, Dot. And a 
glass of beer here, if there’s any left, small wife ! ” 

His challenge was addressed to the old lady, who accepting^ 
it with gracious readiness, they were soon engaged upon the 
game. At first, the Carrier looked about him sometimes, with 
a smile, or now and then called Dot to peep over his shoulder 
at his hand, and advise him on some knotty point. But his 
adversary being a rigid disciplinarian, and subject to an oc- 
casional weakness in respect of pegging more than she was 
entitled to, required such vigilance on his part, as left him 
neither eyes nor ears to spare. Thus, his whole attention 
gradually became absorbed upon the cards ; and he thought of 
nothing else, until a hand upon his shoulder restored him to 
a consciousness of Tackleton. 

‘‘ I am sorry to disturb you — but a word, directly.” 

“ I’m going to deal,” returned the Carrier. “ It’s a crisis.’^ 

‘‘ It is,” said Tackleton. '' Come here, man ! ” 

There was that in his pale face which made the other rise 
immediately, and ask him, in a hurry, what the matter was. 

“ Hush! John Peerybingle,” said Tackleton. I am sorry 
for this. I am indeed. I have been afraid of it. I have 
suspected it from the first.” 

“ What is it ? ” asked the Carrier, with a frightened aspect. 

‘‘ Hush ! I’ll show you, if you’ll come with me.” 

The Carrier accompanied him, without another word. They 
went across a yard, where the stars were shining; and by a 
little side door, into Tackleton’s own counting-house, where 
there was a glass window, commanding the ware-room : which 
was closed for the night. There was no light in the counting- 
house itself, but there were lamps in the long narrow ware- 
room ; and consequently the window was bright. 

‘‘ A moment ! ” said Tackleton. Can you bear to look 
through that window, do you think?” 

“ Why not ? ” returned the Carrier. 

‘‘ A moment more,” said Tackleton. “ Don’t commit any 
violence. It’s of no use. It’s dangerous too. You’re a 
strong-made man ; and you might do Murder before you know 
it.” 

The Carrier looked him in the face, and recoiled a step as if 


THE CRICKET ON THE HEARTH 217 

he had been struck. In one stride he was at the window, and 
he saw — 

O Shadow on the Hearth! O truthful Cricket! O per- 
fidious Wife! 

He saw her, with the old man ; old no longer, but erect and 
gallant : bearing in his hand the false white hair that had won 
his way into their desolate and miserable home. He saw her 
listening to him, as he bent his head to whisper in her ear ; and 
suffering him to clasp her round the waist, as they moved 
slowly down the dim wooden gallery towards the door by which 
they had entered it. He saw them stop, and saw her turn — 
to have the face, the face he loved so, so presented to his view ! 
— and saw her, with her own hands, adjust the Lie upon his 
head, laughing, as she did it, at his unsuspicious nature! 

He clenched his strong right hand at first, as if it would 
have beaten down a lion. But opening it immediately again, 
he spread it out before the eyes of Tackleton (for he was 
tender of her, even then), and so, as they passed out, fell down 
upon a desk, and was as weak as an infant. 

He was wrapped up to the chin, and busy with his horse 
and parcels, when she came into the room, prepared for going 
home. 

“Now John, dear! Good night. May! Good night, 
Bertha ! ” 

Could she kiss them? Could she be blithe and cheerful in 
her parting? Could she venture to reveal her face to them 
without a blush? Yes. Tackleton observed her closely; and 
she did all this. 

Tilly was hushing the baby; and she crossed and recrossed 
Tackleton, a dozen times, repeating drowsily: 

“ Did the knowledge that it was to be its wifes, then, wring 
its hearts almost to breaking; and did its fathers deceive it 
from its cradles but to break its hearts at last! ” 

“ Now Tilly, give me the Baby. Good-night, Mr. Tackleton. 
Where’s John, for Goodness’ sake?” 

“He’s going to walk, beside the horse’s head,” said Tack- 
leton; who helped her to her seat. 

“ My dear John. Walk? To-night?” 

The muffied figure of her husband made a hasty sign in the 
affirmative ; and the false stranger and the little nurse being in 


2i8 , THE CRICKET ON THE HEARTH 


their places, the old horse moved off. Boxer, the unconscious 
Boxer, running on before, running back, running round and 
round the cart, and barking as triumphantly and merrily as 
ever. 

When Tackleton had gone off likewise, escorting May and 
her mother home, poor Caleb sat down by the fire beside his 
daughter ; anxious and remorseful at the core ; and still saying 
in his wistful contemplation of her, “ Have I deceived her from 
her cradle, but to break her heart at last ! ” 

The toys that had been set in motion for the Baby, had all 
stopped and run down, long ago. In the faint light and silence, 
the imperturbably calm dolls ; the agitated rocking-horses with 
distended eyes and nostrils; the old gentlemen at the street 
doors, standing, half doubled up, upon their failing knees and 
ankles ; the wry-faced nut-crackers ; the very Beasts upon their 
way into the Ark, in twos, like a Boarding-School out walking ; 
might have been imagined to be stricken motionless with fan- 
tastic wonder, at Dot being false, or Tackleton beloved, under 
any combination of circumstances. 


CHIRP THE THIRD 


HE Dutch clock in the corner struck Ten, when the Car- 



X rier sat down by his fireside. So troubled and grief- 
worn, that he seemed to scare the Cuckoo, who, having cut his 
ten melodious announcements as short as possible, plunged back 
into the Moorish Palace again, and clapped his little door be- 
hind him, as if the unwonted spectacle were too much for his 
feelings. 

If the little Haymaker had been armed with the sharpest of 
scythes, and had cut at every stroke into the Carrier's heart, 
he never could have gashed and wounded it, as Dot had done. 

It was a heart so full of love for her ; so bound up and held 
together by innumerable threads of winning remembrance, 
spun from the daily working of her many qualities of endear- 
ment; it was a heart in which she had enshrined herself so 
gently and so closely; a heart so single and so earnest in its 
Truth: so strong in right, so weak in wrong: that it could 


THE CRICKET ON THE HEARTH 219 

cherish neither passion nor revenge at first, and had only room 
to hold the broken image of its Idol. 

But slowly, slowly ; as the Carrier sat brooding on his hearth, 
now cold and dark; other and fiercer thoughts began to rise 
within him, as an angry wind comes rising in the night. The 
Stranger was beneath his outraged roof. Three steps would 
take him to his chamber-door. One blow would beat it in. 
“ You might do Murder before you know it,’^ Tackleton had 
said. How could it be Murder, if he gave the Villain time to 
grapple with him hand to hand ! He was the younger man. 

It was an ill-timed thought, bad for the dark mood of his 
mind. It was an angry thought, goading him to some avenging 
act, that should change the cheerful house into a haunted place 
which lonely travellers would dread to pass by night; and 
where the timid would see shadows struggling in the ruined 
windows when the moon was dim, and hear wild noises in the 
stormy weather. 

He was the younger man ! Yes, yes ; some lover who had 
won the heart that he had never touched. Some lover of her 
early choice: of whom she had thought and dreamed: for 
whom she had pined and pined: when he had fancied her so 
happy by his side. O agony to think of it! 

She had been above stairs with the Baby, getting it to bed. 
As he sat brooding on the hearth, she came close beside him, 
without his knowledge — in the turning of the rack of his great 
misery, he lost all other sounds — and put her little stool at his 
feet. He only knew it, when he felt her hand upon his own, 
and saw her looking up into his face. 

With wonder? No. It was his first impression, and he 
was fain to look at her again, to set it right. No, not with 
wonder. With an eager and inquiring look; but not with 
wonder. At first it was alarmed and serious ; then it changed 
into a strange, wild, dreadful smile of recognition of his 
thought; then there was nothing but her clasped hands on 
her brow, and her bent head, and falling hair. 

Though the power of Omnipotence had been his to wield 
at that moment, he had too much of its Diviner property 
of Mercy in his breast, to have turned one feather’s weight 
of it against her. But he could not bear to see her crouch- 
ing down upon the little seat where he had often looked on 


220 THE CRICKET ON THE HEARTH 


her, with love and pride, so innocent and gay; and when 
she rose and left him, sobbing as she went, he felt it a re- 
lief to have the vacant place beside him rather than her so 
long cherished presence. This in itself was anguish keener 
than all: reminding him how desolate he was become, and 
how the great bond of his life was rent asunder. 

The more he felt this, and the more he knew he could 
have better borne to see her lying prematurely dead before 
him with their little child upon her breast, the higher and 
the stronger rose his wrath against his enemy. He looked 
about him for a weapon. 

There was a Gun, hanging on the wall. He took it down, 
and moved a pace or two towards the door of the perfidious 
Stranger’s room. He knew the Gun was loaded. Some 
shadowy idea that it was just to shoot this man like a Wild 
Beast, seized him, and dilated in his mind until it grew into 
a monstrous demon in complete possession of him, casting 
out all milder thoughts and settling up its undivided empire. 

That phrase is wrong. Not casting out his milder thoughts, 
but artfully transforming them. Changing them into scourges 
to drive him on. Turning water into blood. Love into hate. 
Gentleness into blind ferocity. Her image, sorrowing, hum- 
bled, but still pleading to his tenderness and mercy with 
resistless power, never left his mind; but staying there, it 
urged him to the door; raised the weapon to his shoulder; 
fitted and nerved his finger to the trigger ; and cried “ Kill 
him ! In his bed ! ” 

He reversed the Gun to beat the stock upon the door; 
he already held it lifted in the air; some indistinct design 
was in his thoughts of calling out to him to fly, for God’s 
sake, by the window — 

When, suddenly, the struggling fire illumined the whole 
chimney with a glow of light; and the Cricket on the Hearth 
began to chirp! 

No sound he could have heard; no human voice, not even 
hers; could so have moved and softened him. The artless 
words in which she had told him of her love for this same 
Cricket, were once more freshly spoken; her trembling, ear- 
nest manner at the moment, was again before him; her 
pleasant voice — oh, what a voice it was, for making house- 


THE CRICKET ON THE HEARTH 221 


hold music at the fireside of an honest man ! — thrilled through 
and through his better nature, and awoke it into life and 
action. 

He recoiled from the door, like a man walking in his sleep, 
awakened from a frightful dream; and put the Gun aside. 
Clasping his hands before his face, he then sat down again 
beside the fire, and found relief in tears. 

The Cricket on the Hearth came out into the room, and 
stood in Fairy shape before him. 

‘‘ ‘ I love it,’ ” said the Fairy Voice, repeating what he well 
remembered, “ ‘ for the many times I have heard it, and the 
many thoughts its harmless music has given me.’ ” 

“She said so!” cried the Carrier. “True!” 

“ ‘ This has been a happy Home, John ; and I love the 
Cricket for its sake ! ’ ” 

“ It has been. Heaven knows,” returned the Carrier. “ She 
made it happy, always, — until now.” 

“So gracefully sweet-tempered; so domestic, joyful, busy, 
and light-hearted!” said the Voice. 

“ Otherwise I never could have loved her as I did,” re- 
turned the Carrier. 

The Voice, correcting him, said “ do.” 

The Carrier repeated “ as I did.” But not firmly. His 
faltering tongue resisted his control, and would speak in 
its own way, for itself and him. 

The Figure, in an attitude of invocation, raised its hand 
and said: 

“ Upon your own hearth — ” 

“ The hearth she has blighted,” interposed the Carrier. 

“ The hearth she has — how often I — ^blessed and bright- 
ened,” said the Cricket : “ the hearth which, but for her, 
were only a few stones and bricks and rusty bars, but which 
has been, through her, the Altar of your Home; on which 
>ou have nightly sacrificed some petty passion, selfishness, or 
care, and offered up the homage of a tranquil mind, a trusting 
nature, and an overflowing heart ; so that the smoke from this 
poor chimney has gone upward with a better fragrance than 
the richest incense that is burnt before the richest shrines 
in all the gaudy Temples of this World! — Upon your own 
hearth; in its quiet sanctuary; surrounded by its gentle in- 


222 THE CRICKET ON THE HEARTH 


fluences and associations ; hear her ! Hear me ! Hear every* 
thing that speaks the language of your hearth and home ! ’’ 
And pleads for her ? ” inquired the Carrier. 

‘'All things that speak the language of your hearth and 
home, must plead for her ! returned the Cricket. “ For 
they speak the Truth.’' 

And while the Carrier, with his head upon his hands, 
continued to sit meditating in his chair, the Presence stood 
beside him; suggesting his reflections by its power, and pre- 
senting them before him, as in a Glass or Picture. It was 
not a solitary Presence. From the hearth-stone, from the 
chimney; from the clock, the pipe, the kettle, and the cradle; 
from the floor, the walls, the ceiling, and the stairs ; from the 
cart without, and the cupboard within, and the household im- 
plements; from every thing and every place with which she 
had ever been familiar, and with which she had ever entwined 
one recollection of herself in her unhappy husband’s mind; 
Fairies came trooping forth. Not to stand beside him as 
the Cricket did, but to busy and bestir themselves. To do all 
honour to Her image. To pull him by the skirts, and point 
to it when it appeared. To cluster round it, and embrace it, 
and strew flowers for it to tread on. To try to crown its fair 
head with their tiny hands. To show that they were fond of 
it and loved it; and that there was not one ugly, wicked, or 
accusatory creature to claim knowledge of it — none but their 
playful and approving selves. 

His thoughts were constant to her image. It was always 
there. 

She sat plying her needle, before the fire, and singing to 
herself. Such a blithe, thriving, steady little Dot ! The fairy 
figures turned upon him all at once, by one consent, with one 
prodigious concentrated stare ; and seemed to say “ Is this 
the light wife you are mourning for ! ” 

There were sounds of gaiety outside; musical instruments, 
and noisy tongues, and laughter. A crowd of young merry- 
makers came pouring in; among whom were May Field- 
ing and a score of pretty girls. Dot was the fairest of 
them all; as young as any of them too. They came to sum- 
mon her to join their party. It was a dance. If ever little 
foot were made for dancing, hers was, surely. But she 


THE CRICKET ON THE HEARTH 223 

laughed, and shook her head, and pointed to her cookery on 
the fire, and her table ready spread : with an exulting defiance 
that rendered her more charming than she was before. And 
so she merrily dismissed them: nodding to her would-be 
partners, one by one, as they passed out, with a comical in- 
difference, enough to make them go and drown themselves 
immediately if they were her admirers — and they must have 
been so, more or less; they couldn’t help it. And yet indif- 
ference was not her character. Oh, no! For presently, ‘ 
there came a certain Carrier to the door; and bless her what 
a welcome she bestowed upon him! 

Again the staring figures turned upon him all at once, 
and seemed to say Is this the wife who has forsaken 
you ! ” 

A shadow fell upon the mirror or the picture: call it what 
you will. A great shadow; oTthe Stranger, as he first stood 
underneath thdr'foof; covering it^ "sfitf ace, arid blotting out 
all other objects. But the nimble Fairies worked like 
Bees to clear it off again; and Dot again was there. Still 
bright and beautiful. 

Rocking her little Baby in its cradle; singing to it softly; 
and resting her head upon a shoulder which had its counter- 
part in the musing figure by which the Fairy Cricket stood. 

The night — I mean the real night: not going by Fairy 
clocks — was wearing now; and in this stage of the Carrier’s 
thoughts, the moon burst out, and shone brightly in the 
sky. Perhaps some calm and quiet light had risen also, in 
his mind ; and he could think more soberly of what had hap- 
pened. 

Although the shadow of the Stranger fell at intervals upon 
the glass — always distinct, and big, and thoroughly defined — 
it never fell so darkly as at first. Whenever it appeared, 
the Fairies uttered a general cry of consternation, and plied 
their little arms and legs, with inconceivable activity, to rub 
it out. And whenever they got at Dot again, and showed her 
to him once more, bright and beautiful, they cheered in the 
most inspiring manner. 

They never showed her, otherwise than beautiful and 
bright, for they were Household Spirits to whom Falsehood 
is annihilation; and being so, what Dot was there for them. 


224 THE CRICKET ON THE HEARTH 

but the one active, beaming, pleasant little creature who 
had been the light and sun of the Carrier’s Home! 

The Fairies were prodigiously excited when they showed 
her, with the Baby, gossiping among a knot of sage old ma- 
trons, and affecting to be wondrous old and matronly her- 
self, and leaning in a staid, demure old way upon her husband’s 
arm, attempting — she! such a bud of a little woman — to 
convey the idea of having abjured the vanities of the world 
in general, and of being the sort of person to whom it was 
no novelty at all to be a mother ; yet in the same breath, they 
showed her, laughing at the Carrier for being awkward, 
and pulling up his shirt-collar to make him smart, and 
mincing merrily about that very room to teach him how to 
dance. 

They turned, and stared immensely at him when they 
showed her with the Blind Girl; for though she carried 
cheerfulness and animation with her, wheresoever she went, 
she bore those influences into Caleb Plummer’s home, heaped 
up and running over. The Blind Girl’s love for her, and 
trust in her, and gratitude to her; her own good busy way 
of setting Bertha’s thanks aside; her dexterous little arts for 
filling up each moment of the visit in doing something useful 
to the house, and really working hard while feigning to make 
holiday; her bountiful provision of those standing delicacies, 
the Veal and Ham-Pie and the bottles of Beer; her radiant 
little face arriving at the door, and taking leave ; the wonder- 
ful expression in her whole self, from her neat foot to the 
crown of her head, of being a part of the establishment — 
a something necessary to it, which it couldn’t be without; all 
this the Fairies revelled in, and loved her for. And once 
again they looked upon him all at once, appealingly; and 
seemed to say, while some among them nestled in her dress 
and fondled her, ‘‘ Is this the Wife who has betrayed your 
confidence ! ” 

More than once, or twice, or thrice, in the long thought- 
ful night, they showed her to him sitting on her favourite 
seat, with her bent head, her hands clasped on her brow, 
her falling hair. As he had seen her last. And when they 
found her thus, they neither turned nor looked upon him, 
but gathered close round her, and comforted and kissed her: 


THE CRICKET ON THE HEARTH 225 

and pressed on one another to show sympathy and kindness 
to her: and forgot him altogether. 

Thus the night passed. The moon went down; the stars 
grew pale; the cold day broke; the sun rose. The Carrier 
still sat, musing, in the chimney corner. He had sat there, 
with his head upon his hands, all night. All night the faith- 
ful Cricket had been Chirp, Chirp, Chirping on the Hearth. 
All night he had listened to its voice. All night, the house- 
hold Fairies had been busy with him. All night, she had 
been amiable and blameless in the Glass, except when that 
one shadow fell upon it. 

He rose up when it was broad day, and washed and dressed 
himself. He couldn’t go about his customary cheerful avoca- 
tions ; he wanted spirit for them ; but it mattered the less, 
that it was Tackleton’s wedding-day, and he had arranged to 
make his rounds by proxy. He had thought to have gone 
merrily to church with Dot. But such plans were at an 
end. It was their own wedding-day too. Ah! how little he 
had looked for such a close to such a year! 

The Carrier expected that Tackleton would pay him an 
early visit; and he was right. He had not walked to and 
fro before his own door, many minutes, when he saw the 
Toy-merchant coming in his chaise along the road. As the 
chaise drew nearer, he perceived that Tackleton was dressed 
out sprucely, for his marriage: and had decorated his horse’s 
head with flowers and favours. 

The horse looked much more like a Bridegroom than Tackle- 
ton: whose half-closed eye was more disagreebly expressive 
than ever. But the Carrier took little heed of this. His 
thoughts had other occupation. 

John Peerybingle ! ” said Tackleton, with an air of con- 
dolence. “ My good fellow, how do you find yourself this 
morning? ” 

‘‘ I have had but a poor night. Master Tackleton,” returned 
the Carrier, shaking his head : “ for I have been a good deal 
disturbed in my mind. But it’s over now! Can you spare 
me half-an-hour or so, for some private talk ? ” 

“ I came on purpose,” returned Tackleton, alighting. 
“ Never mind the horse. He’ll stand quiet enough, with the 
reins over this post, if you’ll give him a mouthful of hay.” 


226 THE CRICKET ON THE HEARTH 


The Carrier having brought it from his stable and set it 
before him, they turned into the house. 

“ You are not married before noon? ” he said, “ I think? ’’ 

“ No/’ answered Tackleton. “ Plenty of time. Plenty of 
time.” 

When they entered the kitchen, Tilly Slowboy was rapping 
at the Stranger’s door; which was only removed from it by 
a few steps. One of her very red eyes (for Tilly had been 
crying all night long, because her mistress cried) was at the 
keyhole ; and she was knocking very loud ; and seemed fright- 
ened. 

'' If you please I can’t make nobody hear,” said Tilly, look- 
ing round. “ I hope nobody an’t gone and been and died if 
you please ! ” 

This philanthropic wish. Miss Slowboy emphasised with 
various new raps and kicks at the door; which led to no 
result whatever. 

‘'Shall I go?” said Tackleton. “It’s curious.” 

The Carrier, who had turned his face from the door, signed 
to him to go if he would. 

So Tackleton went to Tilly Slowboy’s relief; and he too 
kicked and knocked; and he too failed to get the least re- 
ply. But he thought of trying the handle of the door; and 
as it opened easily, he peeped in, looked in, went in; and 
soon came running out again. 

“ John Peerybingle,” said Tackleton, in his ear. “ I hope 
there has been nothing — nothing rash in the night.” 

The Carrier turned upon him quickly. 

“ Because he’s gone ! ” said Tackleton ; “ and the window’s 
open. I don’t see any marks — to be sure it’s almost on a 
level with the garden; but I was afraid there might have 
been some — some scuffle. Eh?” 

He nearly shut up the expressive eye altogether; he looked 
at him so hard. And he gave his eye, and his face, and his 
whole person, a sharp twist. As if he would have screwed 
the truth out of him. 

“ Make yourself easy,” said the Carrier. “ He went into 
that room last night, without harm in word or deed from 
me; and no one has entered it since. He is away of his 


THE CRICKET ON THE HEARTH 227 

own free will. Fd go out gladly at that door, and beg my 
bread from house to house, for life, if I could so change 
the past that he had never come. But he has come and 
gone. And I have done with him ! ” 

“Oh! — Well, I think he has got off pretty easy,’' said 
Tackleton, taking a chair. 

The sneer was lost upon the Carrier, who sat down too: 
and shaded his face with his hand, for some little time, be- 
fore proceeding. 

“You showed me last night,” he said at length, “my wife; 
my wife that I love; secretly — ” 

“ And tenderly,” insinuated Tackleton. 

“ Conniving at that man’s disguise, and giving him op- 
portunities of meeting her alone. I think there’s no sight 
I wouldn’t have rather seen than that. I think there’s no 
man in the world I wouldn’t have rather had to show it me.” 

“ I confess to having had my suspicions always,” said 
Tackleton. “And that has made me objectionable here, I 
know.” 

“ But as you did show it me,” pursued the Carrier, not 
minding him ; “ and as you saw her ; my wife ; my wife 
that I love ” — his voice, and eye, and hand, grew steadier 
and firmer as he repeated these words : evidently in pursuance 
of a steadfast purpose — “ as you saw her at this disadvan- 
tage, it is right and just that you should also see with my 
eyes, and look into my breast, and know what my mind is, 
upon the subject. For it’s settled,” said the Carrier, regard- 
ing him attentively. “And nothing can shake it now.” 

Tackleton muttered a few general words of assent, about 
its being necessary to vindicate something or other; but he 
was overawed by the manner of his companion. Plain and 
unpolished as it was, it had a something dignified and noble 
in it, which nothing but the soul of generous Honour, 
dwelling in the man, could have imparted. 

“ I am a plain, rough man,” pursued the Carrier, “ with 
very little to recommend me. I am not a clever man, as 
you very well know. I am not a young man. I loved my 
little Dot, because I had seen her grow up, from a child, 
in her father’s house; because I knew how precious she was; 


228 THE CRICKET ON THE HEARTH 


because she had been my Life, for years and years. There’s 
many men I can’t compare with, who never could have loved 
my little Dot like me, I think ! ” 

He paused, and softly beat the ground a short time with 
his foot, before resuming: 

** I often thought that though I wasn’t good enough for 
her, I should make her a kind husband, and perhaps know 
her value better than another; and in this way I reconciled 
it to myself, and came to think it might be possible that 
we should be married. And in the end, it came about, and 
we were married.” 

'"Hah!” said Tackleton, with a significant shake of his 
head. 

I had studied myself ; I had had experience of myself ; 
I knew how much I loved her, and how happy I should be,” 
pursued the Carrier. “ But I had not — I feel it now — suf- 
ficiently considered her.” 

To be sure,” said Tackleton. “ Giddiness, frivolity, fickle- 
ness, love of admiration! Not considered! All left out of 
sight! Hah!” 

“You had best not interrupt me,” said the Carrier, with 
some sternness, “ till you understand me ; and you’re wide 
of doing so. If, yesterday. I’d have struck that man down 
at a blow, who dared to breathe a word against her; to-day 
I’d set my foot upon his face, if he was my brother ! ” 

The Toy-merchant gazed at him in astonishment. He went 
on in a softer tone: 

“Did I consider,” said the Carrier, “that I took her; at 
her age, and with her beauty; from her young companions, 
and the many scenes of which she was the ornament; in 
which she was the brightest little star that ever shone; to 
shut her up from day to day in my dull house, and keep my 
tedious company? Did I consider how little suited I was 
to her sprightly humour, and how wearisome a plodding man 
like me must be, to one of her quick spirit; did I consider 
that it was no merit in me, or claim in me, that I loved her, 
when everybody must, who knew her? Never. I took ad- 
vantage of her hopeful nature and her cheerful disposition; 
and I married her. I wish I never had ! For her sake ; not 
for mine ! ” 


THE CRICKET ON THE HEARTH 229 

The Toy-merchant gazed at him, without winking. Even 
the half-shut eye was open now. 

Heaven bless her ! ” said the Carrier, for the cheerful 
constancy with which she tried to keep the knowledge of 
this from me ! And Heaven help me, that, in my slow mind, 
I have not found it out before ! Poor child ! Poor Dot ! I 
not to find it out, who have seen her eyes fill with tears, 
when such a marriage as our own was spoken of! I, who 
have seen the secret trembling on her lips a hundred times, 
and never suspected it, till last night! Poor girl! That I 
could ever hope she would be fond of me! That I could 
ever believe she was ! ” 

‘‘ She made a show of it,” said Tackleton. ‘‘ She made 
such a show of it, that to tell you the truth it was the origin 
of my misgivings.” 

And here he asserted the superiority of May Fielding, 
who certainly made no sort of show of being fond of him. 

She has tried,” said the poor Carrier, with greater emo- 
tion than he had exhibited yet ; I only now begin to know 
how hard she has tried; to be my dutiful and zealous wife. 
How good she has been ; how much she has done ; how brave 
and strong a heart she has; let the happiness I have known 
under this roof bear witness ! It will be some help and com- 
fort to me, when I am here alone.” 

“Here alone?” said Tackleton. “Oh! Then you do 
mean to take some notice of this ? ” 

“ I mean,” returned the Carrier, “ to do her the greatest 
kindness, and make her the best reparation, in my power. 
I can release her from the daily pain of an unequal mar- 
riage, and the struggle to conceal it. She shall be as free 
as I can render her.” 

“ Make her reparation ! ” exclaimed Tackleton, twisting and 
turning his great ears with his hands. “ There must 
be something wrong here. You didn’t say that, of course.” 

The Carrier set his grip upon the collar of the Toy-mer- 
chant, and shook him like a reed. 

“ Listen to me ! ” he said. “ And take care that you hear 
me right. Listen to me. Do I speak plainly ? ” 

“ Very plainly indeed,” answered Tackleton. 

“As if I meant it?” 


230 THE CRICKET ON THE HEARTH 

Very much as if you meant it.’’ 

I sat upon that hearth, last night, all night,” exclaimed 
the Carrier. “ On the spot where she has often sat beside 
me, with her sweet face looking into mine. I called up her 
whole life, day by day ; I had her dear self, in its every passage, 
in review before me. And upon my soul she is innocent, if 
there is One to judge the innocent and guilty!” 

Staunch Cricket on the Hearth! Loyal household Fairies! 

“ Passion and distrust have left me ! ” said the Carrier ; 
“ and nothing but my grief remains. In an unhappy mo- 
ment some old lover, better suited to her tastes and years 
than I; forsaken, perhaps, for me, against her will; returned. 
In an unhappy moment : taken by surprise, and wanting time 
to think of what she did: she made herself a party to his 
treachery, by concealing it. Last night she saw him, in the 
interview we witnessed. It was wrong. But otherwise than 
this, she is innocent if there is Truth on earth! ” 

‘‘ If that is your opinion — ” Tackleton began. 

‘‘ So, let her go ! ” pursued the Carrier. “ Go, with my 
blessing for the many happy hours she has given me, and 
my forgiveness for any pang she has caused me. Let her 
go, and have the peace of mind I wish her ! She’ll never 
hate me. She’ll learn to like me better, when I’m not a 
drag upon her, and she wears the chain I have riveted, more 
lightly. This is the day on which I took her, with so little 
thought for her enjoyment, from her home. To-day she 
shall return to it ; and I will trouble her no more. Her father 
and mother will be here to-day — we had made a little plan 
for keeping it together — and they shall take her home. I 
can trust her, there, or anywhere. She leaves me without 
blame, and she will live so I am sure. If I should die — I may 
perhaps while she is still young; I have lost some courage 
in a few hours — she’ll find that I remembered her, and 
loved her to the last! This is the end of what you showed 
me. Now, it’s over ! ” 

‘‘Oh, no, John, not over. Do not say it’s over yet! Not 
quite yet. I have heard your noble words. I could not 
steal away, pretending to be ignorant of what has affected 
me with such deep gratitude. Do not say it’s over, ’till the 
clock has struck again ! ” 


THE CRICKET ON THE HEARTH 231 

She had entered shortly after Tackleton ; and had remained 
there. She never looked at Tackleton, but fixed her eyes 
upon her husband. But she kept away from him, setting as 
wide a space as possible between them ; and though 
she spoke with most impassioned earnestness, she went no 
nearer to him even then. How different in this, from her old 
self ! 

No hand can make the clock which will strike again for 
me the hours that are gone,” replied the Carrier, with a faint 
smile. “ But let it be so, if you will, my dear. It will strike 
soon. It’s of little matter what we say. I’d try to please you 
in a harder case than that.” 

'‘Well!” muttered Tackleton. “I must be off, for when 
the clock strikes again, it’ll be necessary for me to be upon 
my way to church. Good morning, John Peerybingle. I’m 
sorry to be deprived of the pleasure of your company. Sorry 
for the loss, and the occasion of it too 1 ” 

" I have spoken plainly ? ” said the Carrier, accompanying 
him to the door. 

" Oh, quite I ” 

" And you’ll remember what I have said ? ” 

" Why, if you compel me to make the observation,” said 
Tackleton; previously taking the precaution of getting into 
his chaise ; “ I must say that it was so very unexpected, 
that I’m far from being likely to forget it.” 

" The better for us both,” returned the Carrier. " Good- 
bye. I give you joy!” 

" I wish I could give it to you” said Tackleton. “ As I 
can’t; thank’ee. Between ourselves (as I told you before, 
eh?) I don’t much think I shall have the less joy in my mar- 
ried life, because May hasn’t been too officious about me, and 
too demonstrative. Good-bye! Take care of yourself.” 

The Carrier stood looking after him until he was smaller 
in the distance than his horse’s flowers and favours near at 
hand; and then, with a deep sigh, went strolling like a rest- 
less, broken man, among some neighbouring elms; unwilling 
to return until the clock was on the eve of striking. 

His little wife, being left alone, sobbed piteously ; but 
often dried her eyes and checked herself, to say how good 
he was, how excellent he was ! and once or twice she laughed ; 


232 THE CRICKET ON THE HEARTH 

so heartily, triumphantly, and incoherently (still crying all 
the time), that Tilly was quite horrified. 

“Ow if you please don’t!’’ said Tilly. “It’s enough to 
dead and bury the Baby, so it is if you please.” 

“ Will you bring him sometimes, to see his father, Tilly,” 
inquired her mistress ; drying her eyes ; “ when I can’t live 
here, and have gone to my old home ? ” 

“ Ow if you please don’t!” cried Tilly, throwing back her 
head, and bursting out into a howl ; she looked at the moment 
uncommonly like Boxer ; “ Ow if you please don’t ! Ow, 
what has everybody gone and been and done with everybody, 
making everybody else so wretched ! Ow-w-w-w ! ” 

The soft-hearted Slowboy trailed off at this juncture, into 
such a deplorable howl: the more tremendous from its long 
suppression : that she must infallibly have awakened the Baby, 
and frightened him into something serious (probably con- 
vulsions), if her eyes had not encountered Caleb Plummer, 
leading in his daughter. This spectacle restoring her to a 
sense of the proprieties, she stood for some few moments 
silent, with her mouth wide open: and then, posting off to 
the bed on which the Baby lay asleep, danced in a weird. Saint 
Vitus manner on the floor, and at the same time rummaged 
with her face and head among the bedclothes: apparently 
deriving much relief from those extraordinary operations. 

“ Mary! ” said Bertha. “ Not at the marriage! ” 

“ I told her you would not be there. Mum,” whispered 
Caleb. “ I heard as much last night. But bless you,” said 
the little man, taking her tenderly by both hands, “/ don’t 
care for what they say; I don’t believe them. There an’t 
much of me, but that little should be torn to pieces sooner 
than I’d trust a word against you ! ” 

He put his arms about her neck and hugged her, as a 
child might have hugged one of his own dolls. 

“ Bertha couldn’t stay at home this morning,” said Caleb. 
“ She was afraid, I know, to hear the Bells ring: and couldn’t 
trust herself to be so near them on their wedding-day. So 
we started in good time, and came here. I have been thinking 
of what I have done,” said Caleb, after a moment’s pause ; “ I 
have been blaming myself till I hardly knew what to do or 
where to turn, for the distress of mine! I have caused her; 


THE CRICKET ON THE HEARTH 233 

and Tve come to the conclusion that Td better, if you’ll stay 
with me, Mum, the while, tell her the truth. You’ll stay 
with me the while ? ” he inquired, trembling from head to 
foot. “ I don’t know what effect it may have upon her ; I 
don’t know what she’ll think of me; I don’t know that she’ll 
ever care for her poor father afterwards. But it’s best for 
her that she should be undeceived ; and I must bear the con- 
sequences as I deserve ! ” 

“ Mary,” said Bertha, “ where is your hand ! Ah ! Here 
it is ; here it is ! ” pressing it to her lips, with a smile, and 
drawing it through her arm. “ I heard them speaking softly 
among themselves, last night, of some blame against you. 
They were wrong.” 

The Carrier’s Wife was silent. Caleb answered for her. 

“ They were wrong,” he said. 

I knew it ! ” cried Bertha, proudly. '' I told them so. 
I scorned to hear a word! Blame her with justice!” she 
pressed the hand between her own, and the soft cheek 
against her face. No ! I am not so Blind as that.” 

Her father went on one side of her, while Dot remained 
upon the other: holding her hand. 

'' I know you all,” said Bertha, “ better than you think. 
But none so well as her. Not even you, father. There is 
nothing half so real and so true about me, as she is. If I 
could be restored to sight this instant, and not a word were 
spoken, I could choose her from a crowd ! My sister ! ” 

Bertha, my dear ! ” said Caleb, “ I have something on 
my mind I want to tell you, while we three are alone. Hear 
me kindly ! I have a confession to make to you, my Darling.” 

‘‘A confession, father?” 

‘‘I have wandered from the Truth and lost myself, my 
child,” said Caleb, with a pitiable expression in his bewildered 
face. '' I have wandered from the Truth, intending to be 
kind to you; and have been cruel.” 

She turned her wonder-stricken face towards him, and re- 
peated “ Cruel ! ” 

“ He accuses himself too strongly, Bertha,” said Dot. 

You’ll say so, presently. You’ll be the first to tell him 
so.” 

He cruel to me ! ” cried Bertha, with a smile of incredulity. 


234 the cricket ON THE HEARTH 

Not meaning it, my child, ’’ said Caleb. “ But I have 
been; though I never suspected it, till yesterday. My dear 
Blind Daughter, hear me and forgive me! The world you 
live in, heart of mine, doesn’t exist as I have represented it. 
The eyes you have trusted in, have been false to you.” 

She turned her wonder-stricken face towards him still ; but 
drew back, and clung closer to her friend. 

Your road in life was rough, my poor one,^’ said Caleb, 
and I meant to smooth it for you. I have altered objects, 
changed the characters of people, invented many things that 
never have been, to make you happier. I have had conceal- 
ments from you, put deceptions on you, God forgive me I and 
surrounded you with fancies.” 

“But living people are not fancies?” she said hurriedly, 
and turning very pale, and still retiring from him. “ You 
can’t change them.” 

“ I have done so, Bertha,” pleaded Caleb. “ There is one 
person that you know, my Dove — ” 

“ Oh, father ! why do you say, I know ? ” she answered, in 
a tone of keen reproach. “What and whom do / know! I 
who have no leader. I so miserably blind ! ” 

In the anguish of her heart, she stretched out her hands, 
as if she were groping her way; then spread them, in a 
manner most forlorn and sad, upon her face. 

“ The marriage that takes place to-day,” said Caleb, “ is with 
a stern, sordid, grinding man. A hard master to you and 
me, my dear, for many years. Ugly in his looks, and in his 
nature. Cold and callous always. Unlike what I have painted 
him to you in everything, my child. In everything.” 

“ Oh, why,” cried the Blind Girl, tortured, as it seemed, 
almost beyond endurance, “ why did you ever do this ! Why 
did you ever fill my heart so full, and then come in like Death, 
and tear away the objects of my love! O Heaven, how 
blind I am ! How helpless and alone ! ” 

Her afflicted father hung his head, and offered no reply 
but in his penitence and sorrow. 

She had been but a short time in this passion of regret, 
when the Cricket on the Hearth, unheard by all but her, 
began to chirp. Not merrily, but in a low, faint, sorrow- 
ing way. It was so mournful, that her tears began to flow; 


THE CRICKET ON THE HEARTH 235 

and when the Presence which had been beside the Carrier 
all night, appeared behind her, pointing to her father, they 
fell down like rain. 

She heard the Cricket- voice more plainly soon; and was 
conscious, through her blindness, of the Presence hovering 
about her father. 

“ Mary,” said the Blind Girl, tell me what my home is. 
What it truly is.” 

“ It is a poor place, Bertha ; very poor and bare indeed. 
The house will scarcely keep out wind and rain another 
winter. It is as roughly shielded from the weather, Bertha,” 
Dot continued in a low, clear voice, “ as your poor father in 
his sackcloth coat.” 

The Blind Girl, greatly agitated, rose, and led the Car- 
rier’s little wife aside. 

Those presents that I took such care of ; that came al- 
most at my wish, and were so dearly welcome to me,” she 
said, trembling; “where did they come from? Did you send 
them ? ” 

“ No.” 

“Who then?” 

Dot saw she knew, already; and was silent. The Blind 
Girl spread her hands before her face again. But in quite 
another manner now. 

“ Dear Mary, a moment. One moment ! More this way. 
Speak softly to me. You are true, I know. You’d not de- 
ceive me now ; would you ? ” 

“ No, Bertha, indeed ! ” 

“ No, I am sure you would not. You have too much pity 
for me. Mary, look across the room to where we were just 
now; to where my father is — my father, so compassionate 
and loving to me — and tell me what you see.” 

“ I see,” said Dot, who understood her well ; “ an old man 
sitting in a chair, and leaning sorrowfully on the back, with 
his face resting on his hand. As if his child should comfort 
him, Bertha.” 

“ Yes, yes. She will. Go on.” 

“ He is an old man, worn with care and work. He is a 
spare, dejected, thoughtful, grey-haired man. I see him now, 
despondent and bowed down, and striving against nothing. 


236 THE CRICKET ON THE HEARTH 

But, Bertha, I have seen him many times before ; and striving 
hard in many ways for one great sacred object. And I 
honour his grey head, and bless him ! ” 

The Blind Girl broke away from her; and throwing her- 
self upon her knees before him, took the grey head to her 
breast. 

‘‘ It is my sight restored. It is my sight ! ” she cried. 
'' I have been blind, and now my eyes are open. I never 
knew him ! To think I might have died, and never truly 
seen the father, who has been so loving to me ! ” 

There were no words for Caleb’s emotion. 

“ There is not a gallant figure on this earth,” exclaimed the 
Blind Girl, holding him in her embrace, that I would love 
so dearly, and would cherish so devotedly, as this! The 
greyer, and more worn, the dearer, father! Never let them 
say I am blind again. There’s not a furrow in his face, 
there’s not a hair upon his head, that shall be forgotten in my 
prayers and thanks to Heaven ! ” 

Caleb managed to articulate, “ My Bertha ! ” 

“ And in my Blindness, I believed him,” said the girl, ca- 
ressing him with tears of exquisite affection, “ to be so dif- 
ferent! And having him beside me, day by day, so mindful 
of me always, never dreamed of this ! ” 

‘‘ The fresh smart father in the blue coat, Bertha,” said 
poor Caleb. He’s gone ! ” 

“Nothing is gone,” she answered. “Dearest father, no! 
Everything is here — in you. The father that I loved so well ; 
the father that I never loved enough, and never knew; the 
Benefactor whom I first began to reverence and love, because 
he had such sympathy for me; All are here in you. Nothing 
is dead to me. The Soul of all that was most dear to me 
is here — here, with the worn face, and the grey head. And 
I am NOT blind, father, any longer ! ” 

Dot’s whole attention had been concentrated, during this 
discourse, upon the father and daughter; but looking, now, 
towards the little Haymaker in the Moorish meadow, she 
saw that the clock was within a few minutes of striking; 
and fell, immediately, into a nervous and excited state. 

“ Father,” said Bertha, hesitating. “ Mary.” 

“ Yes, my dear,” returned Caleb. “ Here she is.” 


THE CRICKET ON THE HEARTH 237 

“ There is no change in her. You never told me anything 
of her that was not true ? 

I should have done it, my dear, I am afraid,’^ returned 
Caleb, if I could have made her better than she was. But 
I must have changed her for the worse, if I had changed her 
at all. Nothing could improve her, Bertha.’' 

Confident as the Blind Girl had been when she asked the 
question, her delight and pride in the reply, and her renewed 
embrace of Dot, were charming to behold. 

More changes than you think for, may happen though, 
my dear,” said Dot. “ Changes for the better, I mean ; 
changes for great joy to some of us. You mustn’t let them 
startle you too much, if any such should ever happen, and 
affect you. Are those wheels upon the road? You’ve a 
quick ear, Bertha. Are they wheels ? ” 

‘‘ Yes. Coming very fast.” 

I — I — I know you have a quick ear,” said Dot, placing 
her hand upon her heart, and evidently talking on, as fast 
as she could, to hide its palpitating state, “ because I have 
noticed it often, and because you were so quick to find out 
that strange step last night. Though why you should have 
said, as I very well recollect you did say, Bertha, ‘ Whose 
step is that ! ’ and why you should have taken any greater 
observation of it than of any other step, I don’t know. 
Though as I said just now, there are great :changes in the 
world : great changes : and we can’t do better than prepare 
ourselves to be surprised at hardly anything.” 

Caleb wondered what this meant ; perceiving that she spoke 
to him, no less than to his daughter. He saw her, with 
astonishment, so fluttered and distressed that she could scarcely 
breathe; and holding to a chair, to save herself from falling. 

‘‘ They are wheels indeed ! ” she panted. “ Coming nearer ! 
Nearer! Very close! And now you hear them stopping at 
the garden-gate! And now you hear a step outside the door 
— the same step, Bertha, is it not ! — and now ! ” — 

She uttered a wild cry of uncontrollable delight; and run- 
ning up to Caleb put her hands upon his eyes, as a young 
man rushed into the room, and flinging away his hat into 
the air, came sweeping down upon them. 

“ Is it over ? ” cried Dot. 


238 THE CRICKET ON THE HEARTH 

'' Yes ! ” 

“ Happily over ? ” 

Yes!’^ 

Do you recollect the voice, dear Caleb ? Did you ever 
hear the like of it before?” cried Dot. 

“ If my boy in the Golden South Americas was alive — ” 
said Caleb, trembling. 

“ He is alive ! ” shrieked Dot removing her hands from 
his eyes and clapping them in ecstasy ; “ look at him ! See 
where he stands before you, healthy and strong! Your 
own dear son I Your own dear living, loving brother, Ber- 
tha!” 

All honour to the little creature for her transports. All 
honour to her tears and laughter when the three were locked 
in one another’s arms ! All honour to the heartiness with 
which she met the sunburnt sailor-fellow with his dark 
streaming hair half way and never turned her rosy little 
mouth aside but suffered him to kiss it freely and to press 
her to his bounding heart ! 

And honour to the Cuckoo too — why not! — for bursting 
out of the trap-door in the Moorish Palace like a housebreaker, 
and hiccoughing twelve times on the assembled company, as 
if he had got drunk for joy! 

The Carrier, entering, started back: and well he might: 
to find himself in such good company. 

“ Look, John ! ” said Caleb, exultingly, “ look here ! My 
own boy from the Golden South Americas ! My own son ! 
Him that you fitted out, and sent away yourself ; him that 
you were always such a friend to ! ” 

The Carrier advanced to seize him by the hand; but re- 
coiling, as some feature in his face awakened a remembrance 
of the Deaf Man in the cart, said: 

‘‘ Edward ! Was it you ? ” 

‘‘Now tell him all!” cried Dot. “Tell him all, Edward; 
and don’t spare me, for nothing shall make me spare myself 
in his eyes, ever again.” 

“ I was the man,” said Edward. 

“ And could you steal, disguised, into the house of youi 
old friend?” rejoined the Carrier. “There was a frank boy 
once — how many years is it, Caleb, since we heard that he 


THE CRICKET ON THE HEARTH 239 

was dead, and had it proved, we thought? — who never would 
have done that.’" 

There was a generous friend of mine, once : more a father 
to me than a friend : ” said Edward, '' who never would have 
judged me, or any other man, unheard. You were he. So 
I am certain you will hear me now.’’ 

The Carrier, with a troubled glance at Dot, who still kept 
far away from him, replied, “ Well ! that’s but fair. I will.” 

You must know that when I left here, a boy,” said Ed- 
ward, I was in love : and my love was returned. She was 
a very young girl, who perhaps (you may tell me) didn’t 
know her own mind. But I knew mine; and I had a passion 
for her.” 

‘‘ You had ! ” exclaimed the Carrier. “ You ! ” 

‘‘ Indeed I had,” returned the other. “ And she returned 
it. I have ever since believed she did; and now I am sure 
she did.” 

“ Heaven help me ! ” said the Carrier. “ This is worse 
than all.” 

‘‘ Constant to her,” said Edward, and returning, full of 
hope, after many hardships and perils, to redeem my part 
of our old contract, I heard, twenty miles away, that she 
was false to me; that she had forgotten me; and had be- 
stowed herself upon another and a richer man. I had no 
mind to reproach her; but I wished to see her, and to prove 
beyond dispute that this was true. I hoped she might have 
been forced into it, against her own desire and recollection. 
It would be small comfort, but it would be some, I thought: 
and on I came. That I might have the truth, the real truth; 
observing freely for myself, and judging for myself, without 
obstruction on the one hand, or presenting my own influence 
(if I had any) before her, on the other; I dressed myself 
unlike myself — you know how; and waited on the road — you 
know where. You had no suspicion of me ; neither had — had 
she,” pointing to Dot, “ until I whispered in her ear at that 
fireside, and she so nearly betrayed me.” 

“ But when she knew that Edward was alive, and had 
come back,” sobbed Dot, now speaking for herself, as she 
had burned to do, all through this narrative ; “ and when she 
knew his purpose, she advised him by all means to keep his 


240 THE CRICKET ON THE HEARTH 

secret close; for his old friend John Peerybingle was much 
too open in his nature, and too clumsy in all artifice — being a 
clumsy man in general,” said Dot, half laughing and half 
crying — “ to keep it for him. And when she — that’s me, 
John,” sobbed the little woman — ^‘told him all, and how his 
sweetheart had believed him to be dead; and how she had 
at last been over-persuaded by her mother into a marriage 
which the silly, dear old thing called advantageous ; and when 
she — that’s me again, John — told him they were not yet mar- 
ried (though close upon it), and that it would be nothing but 
a sacrifice if it went on, for there was no love on her side; 
and when he went nearly mad with joy to hear it; then she 
— that’s me again — said she would go between them, as she 
had often done before in old times, John, and would sound 
his sweetheart and be sure that what she — me again, John — 
said and thought was right. And it was right, John ! And 
they were brought together, John! And they were married, 
John, an hour ago! And here’s the Bride! And Gruff and 
Tackleton may die a bachelor ! And I’m a happy little woman. 
May, God bless you ! ” 

She was an irresistible little woman, if that be anything 
to the purpose ; and never so completely irresistible as in her 
present transports. There never were congratulations so en- 
dearing and delicious, as those she lavished on herself and on 
the Bride. 

Amid the tumult of emotions in his breast, the honest Car- 
rier had stood, confounded. Flying, now, towards her. Dot 
stretched out her hand to stop him, and retreated as before. 

No, John, no ! Hear all ! Don’t love me any more, John, 
till you’ve heard every word I have to say. It was wrong 
to have a secret from you, John. I’m very sorry. I didn’t 
think it any harm, till I came and sat down by you on the 
little stool last night; but when I knew by what was written 
in your face, that you had seen me walking in the gallery with 
Edward, and knew what you thought; I felt how giddy and 
how wrong it was. But oh, dear John, how could you, could 
you, think so ! ” 

Little woman, how she sobbed again! John Peerybingle 
would have caught her in his arms. But no ; she wouldn’t let 
him. 


THE CRICKET ON THE HEARTH 241 

“ Don’t love me yet, please John ! Not for a long time 
yet! When I was sad about this intended marriage, dear, 
it was because I remembered May and Edward such young 
lovers; and knew that her heart was far away from Tackle- 
ton. You believe that, now. Don’t you, John?” 

John was going to make another rush at this appeal; but 
she stopped him again. 

‘‘No; keep there, please, John! When I laugh at you 
as I sometimes do, John; and call you clumsy, and a dear 
old goose, and names of that sort, it’s because I love you 
John, so well; and take such pleasure in your ways; and 
wouldn’t see you altered in the least respect to have you 
made a King to-morrow.” 

“ Hooroar ! ” said Caleb with unusual vigour. “ My opin- 
ion ! ” 

“ And when I speak of people being middle-aged, and steady, 
John, and pretend that we are a humdrum couple, going on 
in a jog-trot sort of way, it’s only because I’m such a silly 
little thing, John, that I like, sometimes, to act a kind of 
Play with Baby, and all that: and make believe.” 

She saw that he was coming; and stopped him again. But 
she was very nearly too late. 

“ No, don’t love me for another minute or two, if you 
please, John! What I want most to tell you, I have kept 
to the last. My dear, good, generous John; when we were 
talking the other night about the Cricket, I had it on my lips 
to say, that at first I did not love you quite so dearly as I do 
now; that when I first came home here, I was half afraid I 
mightn’t learn to love you every bit as well as I hoped and 
prayed I might — ^being so very young, John. But, dear John, 
every day and hour, I loved you more and more. And if 
I could have loved you better than I do, the noble words I 
heard you say this morning, would have made me. But I can’t. 
All the affection that I had (it was a great deal, John) 
I gave you, as you well deserve, long, long ago, and I have no 
more left to give. Now, my dear Husband, take me to your 
heart again! That’s my home, John; and never, never think 
of sending me to any other ! ” 

You never will derive so much delight from seeing a glorious 
little woman in the arms of a third party, as you would have 


242 THE CRICKET ON THE HEARTH 

felt if you had seen Dot run into the Carrier’s embrace. It 
was the most complete, unmitigated, soul-fraught little piece 
of earnestness that ever you beheld in all your days. 

You may be sure the Carrier was in a state of perfect rap- 
ture ; and you may be sure Dot was likewise ; and you may be 
sure they all were, inclusive of Miss Slowboy, who cried 
copiously for joy, and, wishing to include her young charge in 
the general interchange of congratulations, handed round the 
Baby to everybody in succession, as if it were something to 
drink. 

But now the sound of wheels was heard again outside the 
door; and somebody exclaimed that Gruff and Tackleton was 
coming back. Speedily that worthy gentleman appeared: 
looking warm and flustered. 

“ Why, what the Devil’s this, John Peerybingle ! ” said Tack- 
leton. “ There’s some mistake. I appointed Mrs. Tackleton 
to meet me at the church ; and I’ll swear I passed her on the 
road, on her way here. Oh ! here she is ! I beg your pardon. 
Sir; I haven’t the pleasure of knowing you; but if you can 
do me the favour to spare this young lady, she has rather a 
particular engagement this morning.” 

“ But I can’t spare her,” returned Edward. I couldn’t 
think of it.” 

“What do you mean, you vagabond?” said Tackleton. 

“ I mean, that as I can make allowance for your being 
vexed,” returned the other, with a smile, “ I am as deaf to 
harsh discourse this morning, as T was to all discourse last 
night.” 

The look that Tackleton bestowed upon him, and the start 
he gave ! 

“ I am sorry, Sir,” said Edward, holding out May’s left 
hand, and especially the third finger ; “ that the young lady 
can’t accompany you to church ; but as she has been there once, 
this morning, perhaps you’ll excuse her.” 

Tackleton looked hard at the third finger; and took a little 
piece of silver paper, apparently containing a ring, from his 
waistcoat pocket. 

“ Miss Slowboy,” said Tackleton. “ Will you have the kind- 
ness to throw that in the fire? Thank’ee.” 

“ It was a previous engagement : quite an old engagement : 


THE CRICKET ON THE HEARTH 243 

that prevented my wife from keeping her appointment with 
you, I assure you,” said Edward. 

“ Mr. Tackleton will do me the justice to acknowledge that 
I revealed it to him faithfully; and that I told him, many 
times, I never ;could forget it,” said May, blushing. 

“Oh, certainly!” said Tackleton. “Oh, to be sure. Oh, 
it’s all right. It’s quite correct. Mr. Edward Plummer, I 
infer? ” 

“ That’s the name,” returned the bridegroom. 

“Ah, I shouldn’t have known you. Sir,” said Tackleton; 
scrutinising his face narrowly, and making a low bow. “ I 
give you joy, Sir 1 ” 

“ Thank’ee.” 

“ Mrs. Peerybingle,” said Tackleton, turning suddenly to 
where she stood with her husband ; “ I am sorry. You haven’t 
done me a very great kindness, but, upon my life I am sorry. 
You are better than I thought you. John Peerybingle, I am 
sorry. You understand me; that’s enough. It’s quite correct, 
ladies and gentlemen all, and perfectly satisfactory. Good 
morning ! ” 

With these words he carried it off, and carried himself off 
too: merely stopping at the door, to take the flowers and 
favours from his horse’s head, and to kick that animal once 
in the ribs, as a means of informing him that there was a 
screw loose in his arrangements. 

Of course it became a serious duty now, to make such a 
day of it, as should mark these events for a high Feast and 
Festival in the Peerybingle Calendar for evermore. Accord- 
ingly, Dot went to work to produce such an entertainment, as 
should reflect undying honour on the house and every one 
concerned ; and in a very short space of time, she was up to 
her dimpled elbows in flour, and whitening the Carrier’s coat, 
every time he came near her, by stopping him to give him a 
kiss. That good fellow washed the greens, and peeled the 
turnips, and broke the plates, and upset iron pots full of cold 
water on the fire, and made himself useful in all sorts of ways : 
while a couple of professional assistants, hastily called in from 
somewhere in the neighbourhood, as on a point of life or death, 
ran against each other in all the doorways and round all the 
corners; and everybody tumbled over Tilly Slowboy and the 


244 the cricket ON THE HEARTH 

Baby, everywhere. Tilly never came out in such force before. 
Her ubiquity was the theme of general admiration. She was 
a stumbling-block in the passage at five-and-twenty minutes 
past two ; a man-trap in the kitchen at half-past two precisely ; 
and a pitfall in the garret at five-and-twenty minutes to three. 
The Baby’s head was, as it were, a test and touchstone for 
every description of matter, animal, vegetable, and mineral. 
Nothing was in use that day that didn’t come, at some time or 
other, into close acquaintance with it. 

Then, there was a great Expedition set on foot to go and 
find out Mrs. Fielding; and to be dismally penitent to that 
excellent gentlewoman; and to bring her back, by force if 
needful, to be happy and forgiving. And when the Expedition 
first discovered her, she would listen to no terms at all, but 
said, an unspeakable number of times, that ever she should 
have lived to see the day ! and couldn’t be got to say anything 
else, except “ Now carry me to the grave ; ” which seemed 
absurd, on account of her not being dead, or anything at all 
like it. After a time, she lapsed into a state of dreadful calm- 
ness, and observed, that when that unfortunate train of circum- 
stances had occurred in the Indigo Trade, she had foreseen 
that she would be exposed, during her whole life, to every 
species of insult and contumely; and that she was glad to 
find it was the case; and begged they wouldn’t trouble them- 
selves about her, — for what was she? oh, dear! a nobody! — 
but would forget that such a being lived, and would take their 
course in life without her. From this bitterly sarcastic mood, 
she passed into an angry one, in which she gave vent to the 
remarkable expression that the worm would turn if trodden 
on; and after that, she yielded to a soft regret, and said, if 
they had only given her their confidence, what might she not 
have had it in her power to suggest! Taking advantage of 
this crisis in her feelings, the Expedition embraced her; and 
she very soon had her gloves on, and was on her way to John 
Peerybingle’s in a state of unimpeachable gentility; with a 
paper parcel at her side containing a cap of state, almost as 
tall, and quite as stiff, as a mitre. 

Then, there were Dot’s father and mother to come, in 
another little chaise; and they were behind their time; and 
fears were entertained; and there was much looking out for 


THE CRICKET ON THE HEARTH 245 

them down the road ; and Mrs. Fielding always would look in 
the wrong and morally impossible direction; and being ap- 
prised thereof, hoped she might take the liberty of looking 
where she pleased. At last they came : a chubby little couple, 
jogging along in a snug and comfortable little way that quite 
belonged to the Dot family : and Dot and her mother, side by 
side, were wonderful to see. They were so like each other. 

Then, Dot’s mother had to renew her acquaintance with 
May’s mother; and May’s mother always stood on her gen- 
tility ; and Dot’s mother never stood on anything but her active 
little feet. And old Dot: so to call Dot’s father, I forgot it 
wasn’t his right name, but never mind : took liberties, and shook 
hands at first sight, and seemed to think a cap but so much 
starch and muslin, and didn’t defer himself at all to the Indigo 
Trade, but said there was no help for it now; and, in Mrs. 
Fielding’s summing up, was a good-natured kind of man — but 
coarse, my dear. 

I wouldn’t have missed Dot, doing the honours in her wed- 
ding-gown: my benison on her bright face! for any money. 
No! nor the good Carrier, so jovial and so ruddy, at the 
bottom of the table. Nor the brown, fresh sailor-fellow, and 
his handsome wife. Nor any one among them. To have 
missed the dinner would have been to miss as jolly and as 
stout a meal as man need eat; and to have missed the over- 
flowing cups in which they drank The Wedding-Day, would 
have been the greatest miss of all. 

After dinner, Caleb sang the song about the Sparkling Bowl ! 
As I’m a living man: hoping to keep so, for a year or two: 
he sang it through. 

And, by the bye, a most unlooked-for incident occurred, just 
as he finished the last verse. 

There was a tap at the door ; and a man came staggering in, 
without saying with your leave, or by your leave, with some- 
thing heavy on his head. Setting this down in the middle of 
the table, symmetrically in the centre of the nuts and apples, 
he said: 

‘‘ Mr. Tackleton’s compliments, and as he hasn’t got no use 
for the cake himself, p’raps you’ll eat it.” 

And with those words, he walked off. 

There was some surprise among the company, as you may 


246 THE CRICKET ON THE HEARTH 

imagine. Mrs. Fielding, being a lady of infinite discernment, 
suggested that the cake was poisoned, and related a narrative 
of a cake, which, within her knowledge, had turned a seminary 
for young ladies, blue. But she was overruled by acclamation ; 
and the cake was cut by May, with much ceremony and 
rejoicing. 

I don’t think any one had tasted if, when there came another 
tap at the door, and the same man appeared again, having 
under his arm a vast brown-paper parcel. 

Mr. Tackleton’s compliments, and he’s sent a few toys for 
the Baby. They ain’t ugly.” 

After the delivery of which expressions, he retired again. 

The whole party would have experienced great difficulty in 
finding words for their astonishment, even if they had had 
ample time to seek them. But they had none at all ; for the 
messenger had scarcely shut the door behind him, when there 
came another tap, and Tackleton himself walked in. 

“Mrs. Peerybingle ! ” said the Toy-merchant, hat in hand. 
“ I’m more sorry than I was this morning. I have had time 
to think of it. John Peerybingle! I’m sour by disposition; 
but I can’t help being sweetened, more or less, by coming face 
to face with such a man as you. Caleb 1 This unconscious 
little nurse gave me a broken hint last night, of which I have 
found the thread. I blush to think how easily I might have 
bound you and your daughter to me; and what a miserable 
idiot I was, when I took her for one! Friends, one and all, 
my house is very lonely to-night. I have not so much as a 
Cricket on my Hearth. I have scared them all away. Be 
gracious to me ; let me join this happy party ! ” 

He was at home in five minutes. You never saw such a 
fellow. What had he been doing with himself all his life, 
never to have known, before, his great capacity of being jovial ! 
Or what had the Fairies been doing with him, to have effected 
such a change ! 

“John! you won’t send me home this evening; will you?” 
whispered Dot. 

He had been very near it though ! 

There wanted but one living creature to make the party 
complete ; and, in the twinkling of an eye, there he was : very 
thirsty with hard running, and engaged in hopeless endeavours 


THE CRICKET ON THE HEARTH 247 

to squeeze his head into a narrow pitcher. He had gone with 
the cart to its journey’s end, very much disgusted with the 
absence of his master, and stupendously rebellious to the 
Deputy. After lingering about the stable for some little time, 
vainly attempting to incite the old horse to the mutinous act 
of returning on his own account, he had walked into the tap- 
room and laid himself down before the fire. But suddenly 
yielding to the conviction that the Deputy was a humbug, and 
must be abandoned, he had got up again, turned tail, and come 
home. 

There was a dance in the evening. With which general 
mention of that recreation, I should have left it alone, if I had 
not some reason to suppose that it was quite an original dance, 
and one of a most uncommon figure. It was formed in an 
odd way ; in this way. 

Edward, that sailor-fellow — a good free dashing sort of a 
fellow he was — had been telling them various marvels concern- 
ing parrots, and mines, and Mexicans, and gold dust, when all 
at once he took it in his head to jump up from his seat and 
propose a dance; for Bertha’s harp was there, and she had 
such a hand upon it as you seldom hear. Dot (sly little piece 
of affectation when she chose) said her dancing days were 
over ; I think because the Carrier was smoking his pipe, and 
she liked sitting by him, best. Mrs. Fielding had no choice, 
of course, but to say her dancing days were over, after 
that; and everybody said the same, except May; May was 
ready. 

So May and Edward get up, amid great applause, to dance 
alone; and Bertha plays her liveliest tune. 

Well! if you’ll believe me, they have not been dancing five 
minutes, when suddenly the Carrier flings his pipe away, takes 
Dot round the waist, dashes out into the room, and starts off 
with her, toe and heel, quite wonderfully. Tackleton no 
sooner sees this, than he skims across to Mrs. Fielding, takes 
her round the waist, and follows suit. Old Dot no sooner 
sees this, than up he is, all alive, whisks off Mrs. Dot in the 
middle of the dance, and is the foremost there. Caleb no 
sooner sees this, than he clutches Tilly Slowboy by both hands 
and goes off at score; Miss Slowboy, firm in the belief that 
diving hotly in among the other couples, and effecting any 


248 THE CRICKET ON THE HEARTH 

number of concussions with them, is your only principle of 
footing it. 

Hark! how the Cricket joins the music with its Chirp, Chirp, 
Chirp ; and how the Kettle hums ! 

But what is this! Even as I listen to them, blithely, and 
turn towards Dot, for one last glimpse of a little figure very 
pleasant to me, she and the rest have vanished into air, and I 
am left alone. A Cricket sings upon the Hearth; a broken 
child’s-toy lies upon the ground; and nothing else remains. 



COPYRIGHT, 1913. BY FREDERICK A. STOKES COMPANY 


CALEB AND TILLY SLOWBOY DANCING — 247 




©CIK 64252 


THE BATTLE OF LIFE 

A LOVE STORY 













THE BATTLE OF LIFE 


PART THE FIRST 

O NCE upon a time, it matters little when, and in stalwart 
England, it matters little where, a fierce battle was 
fought. It was fought upon a long summer day when the 
waving grass was green. Many a wild flower formed by the 
Almighty Hand to be a perfumed goblet for the dew, felt its 
enamelled cup filled high with blood that day, and shrinking 
dropped. Many an insect deriving its delicate colour from 
harmless leaves and herbs, was stained anew that day by 
dying men, and marked its frightened way with an unnatural 
track. The painted butterfly took blood into the air upon the 
edges of its wings. The stream ran red. The trodden ground 
became a quagmire, whence, from sullen pools collected in the 
prints of human feet and horses’ hoofs, the one prevailing hue 
still lowered and glimmered at the sun. 

Heaven keep us from a knowledge of the sights the moon 
beheld upon that field, when, coming up above the black line 
of distant rising-ground, softened and blurred at the edge by 
trees, she rose into the sky and looked upon the plain, strewn 
with upturned faces that had once at mothers’ breasts sought 
mothers’ eyes, or slumbered happily. Heaven keep us from a 
knowledge of the secrets whispered afterwards upon the tainted 
wind that blew across the scene of that day’s work and that 
night’s death and suffering! Many a lonely moon was bright 
upon the battle-ground, and many a star kept mournful watch 
upon it, and many a wind from every quarter of the earth blew 
over it, before the traces of the fight were worn away. 

They lurked and lingered for a long time, but survived in 
little things, for Nature, far above the evil passions of men, 
soon recovered her serenity, and smiled upon the guilty battle- 
ground as she had done before, when it was innocent. The 
larks sang high above it; the swallows skimmed and dipped 

251 


THE BATTLE OF LIFE 


252 

and flitted to and fro; the shadows of the flying clouds pursued 
each other swiftly, over grass and corn and turnip-field and 
wood, and over roof and church-spire in the nestling town 
among the trees, away into the bright distance on the border 
of the sky and earth, where the red sunsets faded. Crops were 
sown, and grew up, and were gathered in; the stream that 
had been crimsoned, turned a water-mill ; men whistled at the 
plough; gleaners and haymakers were seen in quiet groups at 
work; sheep and oxen pastured; boys whooped and called, in 
fields, to scare away the birds ; smoke rose from cottage chim- 
neys ; Sabbath bells rang peacefully ; old people lived and died ; 
the timid creatures of the field, and simple flowers of the bush 
and garden, grew and withered in their destined terms : and 
all upon the fierce and bloody battle-ground, where thousands 
upon thousands had been killed in the great fight. 

But there were deep green patches in the growing corn at 
first, that people looked at awfully. Year after year they re- 
appeared ; and it was known that underneath those fertile spots, 
heaps of men and horses lay buried, indiscriminately, enrich- 
ing the ground. The husbandmen who ploughed those places, 
shrank from the great worms abounding there ; and the sheaves 
they yielded, were, for many a long year, called the Battle 
Sheaves, and set apart ; and no one ever knew a Battle Sheaf 
to be among the last load at a Harvest Home. For a long 
time, every furrow that was turned, revealed some fragments 
of the fight. For a long time, there were wounded trees upon 
the battle-ground ; and scraps of hacked and broken fence and 
wall, where deadly struggles had been made; and trampled 
parts where not a leaf or blade would grow. For a long time, 
no village-girl would dress her hair or bosom with the sweetest 
flower from that field of death: and after many a year had 
come and gone, the berries growing there, were still believed 
to leave too deep a stain upon the hand that plucked them. 

The Seasons in their course, however, though they passed as 
lightly as the summer clouds themselves, obliterated, in the 
lapse of time, even these remains of the old conflict ; and wore 
away such legendary traces of it as the neighbouring people 
carried in their minds, until they dwindled into old wives’ tales, 
dimly remembered round the winter fire, and waning every 
year. Where the wild flowers and berries had so long re- 


THE BATTLE OF LIFE 


253 

mained upon the stem untouched, gardens arose, and houses 
were built, and children played at battles on the turf. The 
wounded trees had long ago made Christmas logs, and blazed 
and roared away. The deep green patches were no greener 
now than the memory of those who lay in dust below. The 
plough-share still turned up from time to time some rusty bits 
of metal, but it was hard to say what use they had ever served, 
and those who found them wondered and disputed. An old 
dinted corslet, and a helmet, had been hanging in the church 
so long, that the same weak half-blind old man who tried in 
vain to make them out above the whitewashed arch, had mar- 
velled at them as a baby. If the host slain upon the field, 
could have been for a moment reanimated in the forms in 
which they fell, each upon the spot that was the bed of his 
untimely death, gashed and ghastly soldiers would have stared 
in, hundreds deep, at household door and window ; and would 
have risen on the hearths of quiet homes; and would have 
been the garnered store of barns and granaries ; and would 
have started up between the cradled infant and its nurse; and 
would have floated with the stream, and whirled round on the 
mill, and crowded the orchard, and burdened the meadow, and 
piled the rickyard high with dying men. So altered was the 
battle-ground, where thousands upon thousands had been killed 
in the great fight. 

Nowhere more altered, perhaps, about a hundred years ago, 
than in one little orchard attached to an old stone house with 
a honeysuckle porch: where, on a bright autumn morning, 
there were sounds of music and laughter, and where two girls 
danced merrily together on the grass, while some half-dozen 
peasant women standing on ladders, gathering the apples from 
the trees, stopped in their work to look down, and share their 
enjoyment. It was a pleasant, lively, natural scene; a beauti- 
ful day, a retired spot ; and the two girls, quite unconstrained 
and careless, danced in the very freedom and gaiety of their 
hearts. 

If there were no such thing as display in the world, my 
private opinion is, and I hope you agree with me, that we 
might get on a great deal better than we do, and might be 
infinitely more agreeable company than we are. It was charm- 
ing to see how these girls danced. They had no spectators but 


THE BATTLE OF LIFE 


254 

the apple-pickers on the ladders. They were very glad to 
please them, but they danced to please, themselves (or at least 
you would have supposed so) ; and you could no more 
help admiring, than they could help dancing. How they did 
dance ! 

Not like opera-dancers. Not at all. And not like Madame 
Anybody’s finished pupils. Not the least. It was not qua- 
drille dancing, nor minuet dancing, nor even country-dance 
dancing. It was neither in the old style, nor the new style, nor 
the French style, nor the English style; though it may have 
been, by accident, a trifle in the Spanish style, which is a free 
and joyous one, I am told, deriving a delightful air of off-hand 
inspiration, from the chirping little castanets. As they danced 
among the orchard trees, and down the groves of stems and 
back again, and twirled each other lightly round and round, 
the influence of their airy motion seemed to spread and spread, 
in the sun-lighted scene, like an expanding circle in the water. 
Their streaming hair and fluttering skirts, the elastic grass 
beneath their feet, the boughs that rustled in the morning air 
— the flashing leaves, their speckled shadows on the soft green 
ground — the balmy wind that swept along the landscape, glad 
to turn the distant windmill, cheerily — everything between the 
two girls, and the man and team at plough upon the ridge of 
land, where they showed against the sky as if they were the 
last things in the world — seemed dancing too. 

At last the younger of the dancing sisters, out of breath, and 
laughing gaily, threw herself upon a bench to rest. The other 
leaned against a tree hard by. The music, a wandering harp 
and fiddle, left off with a flourish, as if it boasted of its fresh- 
ness; though, the truth is, it had gone at such a pace, and 
worked itself to such a pitch of competition with the dancing, 
that it never could have held on half a minute longer. The 
apple-pickers on the ladders raised a hum and murmur of ap- 
plause, and then, in keeping with the sound, bestirred them- 
selves to work again, like bees. 

The more actively, perhaps, because an elderly gentleman, 
who was no other than Doctor Jeddler himself — it was Doctor 
Jeddler’s house and orchard, you should know, and these were 
Doctor Jeddler’s daughters — came bustling out to see what was 
the matter, and who the deuce played music on his property, 


THE BATTLE OF LIFE 255 

before breakfast. For he was a great philosopher, Doctor 
Jeddler, and not very musical. 

“ Music and dancing to-day ! said the Doctor, stopping 
short, and speaking to himself, I thought they dreaded to- 
day. But it’s a world of contradictions. Why, Grace; why, 
Marion ! ” he added, aloud, is the world more mad than usual 
this morning?” 

“ Make some allowance for it, father, if it be,” replied his 
younger daughter, Marion, going close to him, and looking 
into his face, “ for it’s somebody’s birthday.” 

“ Somebody’s birthday. Puss,” replied the Doctor. Don’t 
you know it’s always somebody’s birthday? Did you never 
hear how many new performers enter on this — ha ! ha ! ha ! — 
it’s impossible to speak gravely of it — on this preposterous and 
ridiculous business called Life, every minute?” 

‘‘No, father!” 

“ No, not you, of course; you’re a woman — almost,” said the 
Doctor. “ By the bye,” and he looked into the pretty face, 
still close to his, “ I suppose it’s your birthday.” 

“ No ! Do you really, father? ” cried his pet daughter purs- 
ing up her red lips to be kissed. 

“ There ! Take my love with it,” said the Doctor, imprint- 
ing his upon them ; “ and many happy returns of the — the 
ideal! — of the day. The notion of wishing happy returns in 
such a farce as this,” said the Doctor to himself, “ is good ! 
Ha ! ha ! ha ! ” 

Doctor Jeddler was, as I have said, a great philosopher; and 
the heart and mystery of his philosophy was, to look upon the 
world as a gigantic practical joke: as something too absurd to 
be considered seriously, by any rational man. His system of 
belief had been, in the beginning, part and parcel of the battle- 
ground on which he lived ; as you shall presently understand. 

“ Well ! But how did you get the music? ” asked the Doc- 
tor. “ Poultry-stealers, of course. Where did the minstrels 
come from ? ” 

“ Alfred sent the music,” said his daughter Grace, adjusting 
a few simple flowers in her sister’s hair, with which in her 
admiration of that youthful beauty, she had herself adorned 
it half-an-hour before, and which the dancing had disarranged. 

“ Oh ! Alfred sent the music, did he ? ” returned the Doctor. 


256 ‘ THE BATTLE OF LIFE 

“ Yes. He met it coming out of the town as he was entering 
early. The men are travelling on foot, and rested there last 
night; and as it was Marion’s birthday, and he thought it 
would please her, he sent them on, with a pencilled note to 
me, saying that if I thought so too, they had come to serenade 
her.” 

“ Ay, ay,” said the Doctor, carelessly, he always takes your 
opinion.” 

“ And my opinion being favourable,” said Grace, good- 
humouredly; and pausing for a moment to admire the pretty 
head she decorated, with her own thrown back ; “ and Marion 
being in high spirits, and beginning to dance, I joined her: 
and so we danced to Alfred’s music till we were out of breath. 
And we thought the music all the gayer for being sent by 
Alfred. Didn’t we, dear Marion?” 

Oh, I don’t know, Grace. How you tease me about Al- 
fred.” 

“ Tease you by mentioning your lover ! ” said her sister. 

“ I am sure I don’t much care to have him mentioned,” said 
the wilful beauty, stripping the petals from some flowers she 
held, and scattering them on the ground. “ I am almost tired 
of hearing of him ; and as to his being my lover — ” 

Hush ! Don’t speak lightly of a true heart, which is all 
your own, Marion,” cried her sister, even in jest. There is 
not a truer heart than Alfred’s in the world ! ” 

“ No — no,” said Marion, raising her eyebrows with a pleas- 
ant air of careless consideration, “ perhaps not. But I don’t 
know that there’s any great merit in that. I — I don’t want 
him to be so very true. I never asked him. If he expects 
that I — But, dear Grace, why need we talk of him at all, just 
now ! ” 

It was agreeable to see the graceful figures of the blooming 
sisters, twined together, lingering among the trees, conversing 
thus, with earnestness opposed to lightness, yet with love re- 
sponding tenderly to love. And it was very curious indeed to 
see the younger sister’s eyes suffused with tears ; and something 
fervently and deeply felt, breaking through the wilfulness of 
what she said, and striving with it painfully. 

The difference between them, in respect of age, could not 
exceed four years at most; but Grace, as often happens in 


THE BATTLE OF LIFE 


257 

such cases, when no mother watches over both (the Doctor’s 
wife was dead), seemed, in her gentle care of her younger 
sister, and in the steadiness of her devotion to her, older than 
she was; and more removed, in course of nature, from all 
competition with her, or participation, otherwise than through 
her sympathy and true affection, in her wayward fancies, than 
their ages seemed to warrant. Great character of mother, that, 
even in this shadow, and faint reflection of it, purifies the heart, 
and raises the exalted nature nearer to the angels ! 

The Doctor’s reflections, as he looked after them, and heard 
the purport of their discourse, were limited, at first, to certain 
merry meditations on the folly of all loves and likings, and the 
idle imposition practised on themselves by young people, who 
believe, for a moment, that there could be anything serious in 
such bubbles, and were always undeceived — always! 

But the home-adorning, self-denying qualities of Grace, and 
her sweet temper, so gentle and retiring, yet including so much 
constancy and bravery of spirit, seemed all expressed to him 
in the contrast between her quiet household figure and that of 
his younger and more beautiful child; and he was sorry for 
her sake — sorry for them both — that life should be such a 
very ridiculous business as it was. 

The Doctor never dreamed of inquiring whether his chil- 
dren, or either of them, helped in any way to make the scheme 
a serious one. But then he was a Philosopher. 

A kind and generous man by nature, he had stumbled, by 
chance, over that common Philosopher’s stone (much more 
easily discovered than the object of the alchemist’s re- 
searches), which sometimes trips up kind and generous men, 
and has the fatal property of turning gold to dross, and every 
precious thing to poor account. 

“ Britain ! ” cried the Doctor. ‘‘ Britain I Hallo 1 ” 

A small man, with an uncommonly sour and discontented 
face, emerged from the house, and returned to this call the 
unceremonious acknowledgment of Now then ! ” 

Where’s the breakfast table ? ” said the Doctor. 

‘‘ In the house,” returned Britain. 

Are you going to spread it out here, as you were told last 
night ? ” said the Doctor. ‘‘ Don’t you know that there are 
gentlemen coming? That there’s business to be done this 


THE BATTLE OF LIFE 


258 

morning, before the coach comes by? That this is a very 
particular occasion ? ” 

“ I couldn’t do anything, Doctor Jeddler, till the women had 
done getting in the apples, could I?” said Britain, his voice 
rising with his reasoning, so that it was very loud at last. 

“ Well, have they done now ? ” returned the Doctor, looking 
at his watch, and clapping his hands. Come ! make haste ! 
where’s Clemency ? ” 

“ Here am I, Mister,” said a voice from one of the ladders, 
which a pair of clumsy feet descended briskly. It’s all done 
now. Clear away, gals. Everything shall be ready for you 
in half a minute. Mister.” 

With that she began to bustle about most vigorously; pre- 
senting, as she did so, an appearance sufficiently peculiar to 
justify a word of introduction. 

She was about thirty years old ; and had a sufficiently plump 
and cheerful face, though it was twisted up into an odd ex- 
pression of tightness that made it comical. But the extraor- 
dinary homeliness of her gait and manner, would have 
superseded any face in the world. To say that she had two 
left legs, and somebody else’s arms ; and that all four limbs 
seemed to be out of joint, and to start from perfectly wrong 
places when they were set in motion; is to offer the mildest 
outline of the reality. To say that she was perfectly content 
and satisfied with these arrangements, and regarded them as 
being no business of hers, and took her arms and legs as they 
came, and allowed them to dispose of themselves just as it 
happened, is to render faint justice to her equanimity. Her 
dress was a prodigious pair of self-willed shoes, that never 
wanted to go where her feet went; blue stockings; a printed 
gown of many colours, and the most hideous pattern procur- 
able for money; and a white apron. She always wore short 
sleeves, and always had, by some accident, grazed elbows, in 
which she took so lively an interest that she was continually 
trying to turn them round and get impossible views of them. 
In general, a little cap perched somewhere on her head ; though 
it was rarely to be met with in the place usually occupied in 
other subjects, by that article of dress; but from head to foot 
she was scrupulously clean, and maintained a kind of dis- 
located tidiness. Indeed her laudable anxiety to be tidy and 


THE BATTLE OF LIFE 


259 

compact in her own conscience as well as in the public eye, 
gave rise to one of her most startling evolutions, which was 
to grasp herself sometimes by a sort of wooden handle (part 
of her clothing, and familiarly called a busk), and wrestle as 
it were with her garments, until they fell into a symmetrical 
arrangement. 

Such, in outward form and garb, was Clemency Newcome; 
who was supposed to have unconsciously originated a corrup- 
tion of her own Christian name, from Clementina (but nobody 
knew, for the deaf old mother, a very phenomenon of age, 
whom she had supported almost from a child, was dead, and 
she had no other relation) ; who now busied herself in prepar- 
ing the table; and who stood, at intervals, with her bare red 
arms crossed, rubbing her grazed elbows with opposite hands, 
and staring at it very composedly, until she suddenly remem- 
bered something else it wanted and jogged off to fetch it. 

Here are them two lawyers a-coming. Mister ! ” said 
Clemency, in a tone of no very great good-will. 

Aha ! cried the Doctor, advancing to the gate to meet 
them. Good morning, good morning ! Grace, my dear ! 
Marion! Here are Messrs. Snitchey and Craggs. Where’s 
Alfred?” 

“ He’ll be back directly, father, no doubt,” said Grace. '' He 
had so much to do this morning in his preparations for de- 
parture, that he was up and out by daybreak. Good morning, 
gentlemen.” 

'' Ladies 1 ” said Mr. Snitchey, “ for Self and Craggs,” who 
bowed, good morning. Miss,” to Marion, 1 kiss your 
hand.” Which he did. And I wish you ” — which he might 
or might not, for he didn’t look, at first sight, like a gentleman 
troubled with many warm outpourings of soul, in behalf of 
other people, “ a hundred happy returns of this auspicious 
day.” 

“ Ha, ha, ha ! ” laughed the Doctor thoughtfully, with his 
hands in his pockets. “ The great farce in a hundred acts ! ” 

‘‘ You wouldn’t, I am sure,” said Mr. Snitchey, standing a 
small professional blue bag against one leg of the table, “ cut 
the great farce short for this actress, at all events. Doctor 
Jeddler.” 

“ No,” returned the Doctor. God forbid ! May she live 


26 o 


THE BATTLE OF LIFE 


to laugh at it, as long as she can laugh, and then say, with the 
French wit, ^ The farce is ended; draw the curtain/ 

“ The French wit,” said Mr. Snitchey, peeping sharply into 
his blue bag, was wrong. Doctor Jeddler; and your philos- 
ophy is altogether wrong, depend upon it, as I have often 
told you. Nothing serious in life! What do you call law?” 

A joke,” replied the Doctor. 

“ Did you ever go to law ? ” asked Mr. Snitchey, looking out 
of the blue bag. 

Never,” returned the Doctor. 

“ If you ever do,” said Mr. Snitchey, “ perhaps you’ll alter 
that opinion.” 

Graggs, who seemed to be represented by Snitchey, and to 
be conscious of little or no separate existence or personal in- 
dividuality, offered a remark of his own in this place. It in- 
volved the only idea of which he did not stand seized and 
possessed in equal moieties with Snitchey; but he had some 
partners in it among the wise men of the world. 

It’s made a great deal too easy,” said Mr. Graggs. 

“ Law is ? ” asked the Doctor. 

“ Yes,” said Mr. Graggs, “ everything is. Everything ap- 
pears to me to be made too easy, now-a-days. It’s the vice of 
these times. If the world is a joke (I am not prepared to say 
it isn’t), it ought to be made a very difficult joke to crack. It 
ought to be as hard a struggle. Sir, as possible. That’s the 
intention. But it’s being made far too easy. We are oiling 
the gates of life. They ought to be rusty. We shall have 
them beginning to turn, soon, with a smooth sound. Whereas 
they ought to grate upon their hinges. Sir.” 

Mr. Graggs seemed positively to grate upon his own hinges, 
as he delivered this opinion; to which he communicated im- 
mense effect — being a cold, hard, dry man, dressed in grey and 
white, like a flint ; with small twinkles in his eyes, as if some- 
thing struck sparks out of them. The three natural kingdoms, 
indeed, had each a fanciful representative among this brother- 
hood of disputants : for Snitchey was like a magpie or a raven 
(only not so sleek), and the Doctor had a streaked face like a 
winter-pippin, with here and there a dimple to express the peck- 
ings of the birds, and a very little bit of pigtail behind, that 
stood for the stalk. 


THE BATTLE OF LIFE 


261 

As the active figure of a handsome young man, dressed for 
a journey, and followed by a porter, bearing several packages 
and baskets, entered the orchard at a brisk pace, and with an 
air of gaiety and hope that accorded well with the morning, 
these three drew together, like the brothers of the sister Fates, 
or like the Graces most effectually disguised, or like the three 
weird prophets on the heath, and greeted him. 

“ Happy returns, Alf,” said the Doctor, lightly. 

A hundred happy returns of this auspicious day, Mr. 
Heathfield,” said Snitchey, bowing low. 

Returns ! ’’ Graggs murmured in a deep voice, all alone. 

'‘Why, what a battery !"’ exclaimed Alfred, stopping short, 
" and one — two — three — all foreboders of no good, in the great 
sea before me. I am glad you are not the first I have met 
this morning: I should have taken it for a bad omen. But 
Grace was the first — sweet, pleasant Grace — so I defy you all ! ’’ 

" If you please. Mister, I was the first you know,” said 
Clemency Newcome. " She was a-walking out here, before 
sunrise, you remember. I was in the house.” 

" That’s true ! Clemency was the first,” said Alfred. " So 
I defy you with Clemency.” 

" Ha, ha, ha ! — for Self and Craggs,” said Snitchey. " What 
a defiance ! ” 

" Not so bad a one as it appears, maybe,” said Alfred, shak- 
ing hands heartily with the Doctor, and also with Snitchy and 
Craggs, and then looking round. " Where are the — Good 
Heavens ! ” 

With a start, productive for the moment of a closer partner- 
ship between Jonathan Snitchey and Thomas Craggs than the 
subsisting articles of agreement in that wise contemplated, he 
hastily betook himself to where the sisters stood together, and 
— however, I needn’t more particularly explain his manner of 
saluting Marion first, and Grace afterwards, than by hinting 
that Mr. Craggs may possibly have considered it " too easy.” 

Perhaps to change the subject. Doctor Jeddler made a hasty 
move towards the breakfast, and they all sat down at table. 
Grace presided; but so discreetly stationed herself, as to cut 
off her sister and Alfred from the rest of the company. 
Snitchey and Craggs sat at opposite corners, with the blue bag 
between them for safety ; and the Doctor took his usual posi- 


262 


THE BATTLE OF LIFE 


tion, opposite to Grace. Clemency hovered galvanically 
about the table, as waitress; and the melancholy Britain, at 
another and a smaller board, acted as Grand Carver of a round 
of beef, and a ham. 

‘'Meat?'’ said Britain, approaching Mr. Snitchey, with the 
carving knife and fork in his hands, and throwing the question 
at him like a missile. 

. “ Certainly,” returned the lawyer. 

“ Do you want any ? ” to Craggs. 

“ Lean, and well done,” replied that gentleman. 

Having executed these orders, and moderately supplied the 
Doctor (he seemed to know that nobody else wanted anything 
to eat), he lingered as near the Firm as he decently could, 
watching, with an austere eye, their disposition of the viands, 
and but once relaxing the severe expression of his face. This 
was on the occasion of Mr. Craggs, whose teeth were not of 
the best, partially choking, when he cried out with great anima- 
tion, “ I thought he was gone ! ” 

“ Now Alfred,” said the Doctor, “ for a word or two of 
business, while we are yet at breakfast.” 

“ While we are yet at breakfast,” said Snitchey and Craggs, 
who seemed to have no present idea of leaving off. 

Although Alfred had not been breakfasting, and seemed to 
have quite enough business on his hands as it was, he respect- 
fully answered: 

“ If you please. Sir.” 

“ If anything could be serious,” the Doctor began, “ in such 
a — ” 

“ Farce as this. Sir,” hinted Alfred. 

“ In such a farce as this,” observed the Doctor, “ it might 
be this recurrence, on the eve of separation, of a double birth- 
day, which is connected with many associations pleasant to us 
four, and with the recollection of a long and amicable inter- 
course. That’s not to the purpose.” 

“ Ah ! yes, yes. Doctor Jeddler,” said the young man. “ It 
is to the purpose. Much to the purpose, as my heart bears 
witness this morning; and as yours does too, I know, if you 
would let it speak. I leave your house to-day; I cease to be 
your ward to-day ; we part with tender relations stretching far 
behind us, that never can be exactly renewed, and with others 


THE BATTLE OF LIFE 


263 

dawning yet before us/’ he looked down at Marion beside him, 

fraught with such considerations as I must not trust myself 
to speak of now. Come, come ! ” he added, rallying his spirits 
and the Doctor at once, ‘‘ there’s a serious grain in this large 
foolish dust-heap. Doctor. Let us allow to-day, that there is 
One.” 

‘"To-day!” cried the Doctor. “Hear him! Ha, ha, ha! 
Of all days in the foolish year. Why, on this day, the great 
battle was fought on this ground. On this ground where we 
now sit, where I saw my two girls dance this morning, where 
the fruit has just been gathered for our eating from these 
trees, the roots of which are struck in Men, not earth, — so 
many lives were lost, that within my recollection, generations 
afterwards, a churchyard full of bones, and dust of bones, and 
chips of cloven skulls, has been dug up from underneath our 
feet here. Yet not a hundred people in that battle knew for 
what they fought, or why ; not a hundred of the inconsiderate 
rejoicers in the victory, why they rejoiced. Not half a hun- 
dred people were the better for the gain or loss. Not half-a- 
dozen men agree to this hour on the cause or merits ; and no- 
body, in short, ever knew anything distinct about it, but the 
mourners of the slain. Serious, too ! ” said the Doctor, laugh- 
ing. “ Such a system ! ” 

“ But all this seems to me,” said Alfred, “ to be very 
serious.” 

“ Serious ! ” cried the Doctor. “If you allowed such things 
to be serious, you must go mad, or die, or climb up to the top 
of a mountain, and turn hermit.” 

“ Besides — so long ago,” said Alfred. 

“ Long ago ! ” returned the Doctor. “ Do you know what 
the world has been doing, ever since? Do you know what 
else it has been doing? I don’t! ” 

“ It has gone to law a little,” observed Mr. Snitchey, stir- 
ring his tea. 

“ Although the way out has been always made too easy,” 
said his partner. 

“ And you’ll excuse my saying. Doctor,” pursued Mr. 
Snitchey, “ having been already put a thousand times in pos- 
session of my opinion, in the course of our discussions, that, 
in its haying gone to law, and in its legal system altogether, 


THE BATTLE OF LIFE 


264 

I do observe a serious side — now, really, a something tangible, 
and with a purpose and intention in it — ” 

Clemency Newcome made an angular tumble against the 
table, occasioning a sounding clatter among the cups and 
saucers. 

“ Heyday! whafs the matter there?” exclaimed the Doctor. 

It’s this evil-inclined blue bag,” said Clemency, “ always 
tripping up somebody ! ” 

“ With a purpose and intention in it, I was saying,” resumed 
Snitchey, that commands respect. Life a farce. Doctor Jed- 
dler? With law in it?” 

The Doctor laughed, and looked at Alfred. 

Granted, if you please, that war is foolish,” said Snitchey. 
“ There we agree. For example. Here’s a smiling country,” 
pointing it out with his fork, “ once overrun by soldiers — 
trespassers every man of ’em — and laid waste by fire and 
sword. He, he, he! The idea of any man exposing him- 
self, voluntarily, to fire and sword! Stupid, wasteful, posi- 
tively ridiculous; you laugh at your fellow-creatures, you 
know, when you think of it! But take this smiling country 
as it stands. Think of the laws appertaining to real property ; 
to the bequest and devise of real property ; to the mortgage and 
redemption of real property; to leasehold, freehold, and copy- 
hold estate; think,” said Mr. Snitchey, with such great emo- 
tion that he actually smacked his lips, “ of the complicated 
laws relating to title and proof of title, with all the contra- 
dictory precedents and numerous Acts of Parliament con- 
nected with them; think of the infinite number of ingenious 
and interminable Chancery suits, to which this pleasant pros- 
pect may give rise; — and acknowledge. Doctor Jeddler, that 
there is a green spot in the scheme about us ! I believe,” said 
Mr. Snitchey, looking at his partner, “ that I speak for Self 
and Craggs ? ” 

Mr. Craggs having signified assent, Mr. Snitchey, somewhat 
freshened by his recent eloquence, observed that he would take 
a little more beef, and another cup of tea. 

“ I don’t stand up for life in general,” he added, rubbing his 
hands and chuckling, “ it’s full of folly ; full of something 
worse. Professions of trust, and confidence, and unselfish- 
ness, and all that. Bah, bah, bah! We see what they’re 


THE BATTLE OF LIFE 265 

worth. But you mustn’t laugh at life; you’ve got a game to 
play ; a very serious game indeed ! Everybody’s playing 
against you, you know ; and you’re playing against them. Oh ! 
it’s a very interesting thing. There are deep moves upon the 
board. You must only laugh, Doctor Jeddler, when you win; 
and then not much. He, he, he! And then not much,” re- 
peated Snitchey, rolling his head and winking his eye ; as if he 
would have added, “ you may do this instead 1 ” 

“ Well, Alfred ! ” cried the Doctor, “ what do you say 
now ? ” 

I say. Sir,” replied Alfred, “ that the greatest favour you 
could do me, and yourself too I am inclined to think, would be 
to try sometimes to forget this battle-field, and others like it, 
in that broader battle-field of Life, on which the sun looks 
every day.” 

“ Really, I’m afraid that wouldn’t soften his opinions, Mr. 
Alfred,” said Snitchey. “ The combatants are very eager and 
very bitter in that same battle of Life. There’s a great deal 
of cutting and slashing, and firing into people’s hands from 
behind; terrible treading down, and trampling on; it’s rather 
a bad business.” 

“ I believe, Mr. Snitchey,” said Alfred, there are quiet 
victories and struggles, great sacrifices of self, and noble acts 
of heroism, in it — even in many of its apparent lightnesses and 
contradictions — not the less difficult to achieve, because they 
have no earthly chronicle or audience; done every day in 
nooks and corners, and in little households, and in men’s and 
women’s hearts — any one of which might reconcile the sternest 
man to such a world, and fill him with belief and hope in it, 
though two-fourths of its people were at war, and another 
fourth at law; and that’s a bold word.” 

Both the sisters listened keenly. 

‘‘ Well, well ! ” said the Doctor, “ I am too old to be con- 
verted, even by my friend Snitchey here, or my good spin- 
ster sister, Martha Jeddler; who had what she calls her 
domestic trials ages ago, and has led a sympathising life with 
all sorts of people ever since; and who is so much of your 
opinion (only she’s less reasonable and more obstinate, being 
a woman), that we can’t agree, and seldom meet. I was 
bom upon this battle-field. I began, as a boy, to have my 


266 


THE BATTLE OF LIFE 


thoughts directed to the real history of a battle-field. Sixty 
years have gone over my head; and I have never seen the 
Christian world, including Heaven knows how many loving 
mothers and good enough girls, like mine here, anything but 
mad for a battle-field. The same contradictions prevail in 
everything. One must either laugh or cry at such stupen- 
dous inconsistencies; and I prefer to laugh.^’ 

Britain, who had been paying the profoundest and most 
melancholy attention to each speaker in his turn, seemed 
suddenly to decide in favour of the same preference, if a 
deep sepulchral sound that escaped him might be construed 
into a demonstration of risibility. His face, however, was 
so perfectly unaffected by it, both before and afterwards, that 
although one or two of the breakfast party looked round as 
being startled by a mysterious noise, nobody connected the 
offender with it. 

Except his partner in attendance. Clemency Newcome; 
who, rousing him with one of those favourite joints, her 
elbows, inquired, in a reproachful whisper, what he laughed 
at. 

Not you ! ” said Britain. 

‘‘Who then?^^ 

“ Humanity,” said Britain. “ That’s the joke.” 

“ What between master and them lawyers, he’s getting more 
and more addle-headed every day ! ” cried Clemency, giving 
him a lunge with the other elbow, as a mental stimulant. “ Do 
you know where you are? Do you want to get warning? ” 

“ I don’t know anything,” said Britain, with a leaden eye 
and an immovable visage. “ I don’t care for anything. I 
don’t make out anything. I don’t believe anything. And I 
don’t want anything.” 

Although this forlorn summary of his general condition 
may have been overcharged in an access of despondency, 
Benjamin Britain — sometimes called Little Britain, to dis- 
tinguish him from Great; as we might say Young England, 
to express Old England with a difference — had defined his 
real state more accurately than might be supposed. For 
serving as a sort of man Miles to the Doctor’s Friar Bacon; 
and listening day after day to innumerable orations addressed 
by the Doctor to various people, all tending to show that his 


THE BATTLE OF LIFE 267 

very existence was at best a mistake and an absurdity, this 
unfortunate servitor had fallen, by degrees, into such an 
abyss of confused and contradictory suggestions from within 
and without, that Truth at the bottom of her well, was on 
the level surface as compared with Britain in the depths of 
his mystification. The only point he clearly comprehended, 
was, that the new element usually brought into these dis- 
cussions by Snitchey and Craggs, never served to make them 
clearer, and always seemed to give the Doctor a species of 
advantage and confirmation. Therefore he looked upon the 
Firm as one of the proximate causes of his state of mind, and 
held them in abhorrence accordingly. 

“ But this is not our business, Alfred,” said the Doctor. 
“Ceasing to be my ward (as you have said) to-day; and 
leaving us full to the brim of such learning as the Gram- 
mar School down here was able to give you, and your studies 
in London could add to that, and such practical knowledge 
as a dull old country Doctor like myself could graft upon 
both; you are away, now, into the world. The first term of 
probation appointed by your poor father, being over, away 
you go now, your own master, to fulfil his second desire : and 
long before your three years' tour among the foreign schools 
of medicine is finished, you’ll have forgotten us. Lord, you’ll 
forget us easily in six months ! ” 

“ If I do — But you know better ; why should I speak to 
you ! ” said Alfred, laughing. 

“ I don’t know anything of the sort,” returned the Doctor. 
“ What do you say, Marion ? ” 

Marion, trifling with her teacup seemed to say — but she 
didn’t say it — that he was welcome to forget them, if he 
could. Grace pressed the blooming face against her cheek, 
and smiled. 

“ I haven’t been, I hope, a very unjust steward in the 
execution of my trust,” pursued the Doctor ; “ but I am to 
be, at any rate, formally discharged, and released, and what 
not, this morning; and here are our good friends Snitchey 
and Craggs, with a bagful of papers, and accounts, and docu- 
ments, for the transfer of the balance of the trust fund to 
you (I wish it was a more difficult one to dispose of, Alfred, 
but you must get to be a great man and make it so), and 


268 THE BATTLE OF LIFE 

other drolleries of that sort, which are to be signed, sealed, 
and delivered.” 

'‘And duly witnessed, as by law required,” said Snitchey, 
pushing away his plate, and taking out the papers, which 
his partner proceeded to spread upon the table; “and Self 
and Craggs having been co-trustees with you. Doctor, in so 
far as the fund was concerned, we shall want your two serv- 
ants to attest the signatures — can you read, Mrs. Newcome? ” 

“ I an’t married. Mister,” said Clemency. 

“ Oh, I beg your pardon. I should think not,” chuckled 
Snitchey, casting his eyes over her extraordinary figure. 
“ You can read? ” 

“ A little,” answered Clemency. 

“ The marriage service, night and morning, eh ? ” observed 
the lawyer, jocosely. 

“ No,” said Clemency. “ Too hard. I only reads a thim- 
ble.” 

“ Read a thimble ! ” echoed Snitchey. “ What are you 
talking about, young woman ? ” 

Clemency nodded. “ And a nutmeg-grater.” 

“ Why, this is a lunatic! a subject for the Lord High Chan- 
cellor ! ” said Snitchey, staring at her. 

“ If possessed of any property,” stipulated Craggs. 

Grace, however, interposing, explained that each of the 
articles in question bore an engraved motto, and so formed 
the pocket library of Clemency Newcome, who was not much 
given to the study of books. 

“Oh, that’s it, is it. Miss Grace!” said Snitchey. “Yes, 
yes. Ha, ha, ha! I thought our friend was an idiot. She 
looks uncommonly like it,” he muttered, with a supercilious 
glance. “And what does the thimble say, Mrs. Newcome?” 

“ I an’t married. Mister,” observed Clemency. 

“Well, Newcome. Will that do?” said the lawyer. 
“What does the thimble say, Newcome?” 

How Clemency, before replying to this question, held one 
pocket open, and looked down into its yawning depths for 
the thimble which wasn’t there, — and how she then held an 
opposite pocket open, and seeming to descry it, like a pearl 
of great price, at the bottom, cleared away such intervening 
obstacles as a handkerchief, an end* of wax candle, a flushed 



COPYRIGHT, 1913. BY FREDERICK A. STOKES COMPANY 


SNITCITEY AND CRAGGS— Page e6S 



©CI.K 64253 


THE BATTLE OF LIFE 


269 

apple, an orange, a lucky penny, a cramp bone, a padlock, a 
pair of scissors in a sheath, more expressively describable as 
promising young shears, a handful or so of loose beads, sev- 
eral balls of cotton, a needle-case, a cabinet collection of curl- 
papers, and a biscuit, all of which articles she entrusted 
individually and severally to Britain to hold, — is of no con- 
sequence. Nor how, in her determination to grasp this pocket 
by the throat and keep it prisoner (for it had a tendency to 
swing and twist itself round the nearest corner), she assumed, 
and calmly maintained, an attitude apparently inconsistent 
with the human anatomy and the laws of gravity. It is 
enough that at last she triumphantly produced the thimble 
on her finger, and rattled the nutmeg-grater; the literature 
of both those trinkets being obviously in course of wearing 
out and wasting away, through excessive friction. 

That’s the thimble, is it, young woman ? ” said Mr. 
Snitchey, diverting himself at her expense. And what does 
the thimble say ? ” 

‘‘ It says,” replied Clemency, reading slowly round it as 
if it were a tower, “ For-get and For-give.” 

Snitchey and Craggs laughed heartily. “ So new ! ” said 
Snitchey. “ So easy ! ” said Craggs. '' Such a knowledge 
of human nature in it,” said Snitchey. “ So applicable to the 
affairs of life,” said Craggs. 

“And the nutmeg-grater?” inquired the head of the Firm. 

“ The grater says,” returned Clemency, “ Do as you — wold 
— be — done by.” 

“ ‘ Do, or you’ll be done brown,’ you mean,” said Mr. 
Snitchey. 

“ I don’t understand,” retorted Clemency, shaking her head 
vaguely. “ I an’t no lawyer.” 

“ I am afraid that if she was. Doctor,” said Mr. Snitchey, 
turning to him suddenly, as if to anticipate any effect that 
might otherwise be consequent on this retort, “ she’d find 
it to be the golden rule of half her clients. They are serious 
enough in that — whimsical as your world is — and lay the 
blame on us afterwards. We, in our profession, are little 
else than mirrors after all, Mr. Alfred; but we are generally 
consulted by angry and quarrelsome people, who are not in 
their best looks ; and it’s rather hard to quarrel with us if we 


THE BATTLE OF LIFE 


270 

reflect unpleasant aspects. I think,” said Mr. Snitchey, that 
I speak for Self and Graggs?” 

“ Decidedly,” said Graggs. 

“ And so, if Mr. Britain will oblige us with a mouthful of 
ink,” said Mr. Snitchey, returning to the papers, “ we’ll sign, 
seal, and deliver as soon as possible, or the coach will be 
coming past before we know where we are.” 

If one might judge from his appearance, there was every 
probability of the coach coming past before Mr. Britain knew 
where he was ; for he stood in a state of abstraction, mentally 
balancing the Doctor against the lawyers, and the lawyers 
against the Doctor, and their clients against both; and en- 
gaged in feeble attempts to make the thimble and nutmeg- 
grater (a new idea to him) square with anybody’s system of 
philosophy; and, in short, bewildering himself as much as 
ever his great namesake has done with theories and schools. 
But Glemency, who was his good Genius — though he had 
the meanest possible opinion of her understanding, by reason 
of her seldom troubling herself with abstract speculations, 
and being always at hand to do the right thing at the right 
time — having produced the ink in a twinkling, tendered him 
the further service of recalling him to himself by the ap- 
plication of her elbows; with which gentle flappers she so 
jogged his memory, in a more literal construction of that 
phrase than usual, that he soon became quite fresh and brisk. 

How he laboured under an apprehension not uncommon 
to persons in his degree, to whom the use of pen and ink is 
an event, that he couldn’t append his name to a document, 
not of his own writing, without committing himself in some 
shadowy manner, or somehow signing away vague and 
enormous sums of money; and how he approached the deeds 
under protest, and by dint of the Doctor’s coercion, and in- 
sisted on pausing to look at them before writing (the cramped 
hand, to say nothing of the phraseology, being so much 
Ghinese to him), and also on turning them round to see 
whether there was anything fraudulent, underneath ; and how, 
having signed his name, he became desolate as one who had 
parted with his property and rights; I want the time to tell. 
Also, how the blue bag containing his signature, afterwards 
had a mysterious interest for him, and he couldn’t leave it; 


THE BATTLE OF LIFE 


271 

also, how Clemency Newcome, in an ecstasy of laughter at 
the idea of her own importance and dignity, brooded over 
the whole table with her two elbows like a spread eagle, and 
reposed her head upon her left arm as a preliminary to the 
formation of certain cabalistic characters, which required a 
deal of ink, and imaginary counterparts whereof she executed 
at the same time with her tongue. Also, how, having once 
tasted ink, she became thirsty in that regard, as tigers are 
said to be after tasting another sort of fluid, and wanted to 
sign everything, and put her name in all kinds of places. 
In brief, the Doctor was discharged of his trust and all its 
responsibilities; and Alfred, taking it on himself, was fairly 
started on the journey of life. 

“ Britain ! ” said the Doctor. “ Run to the gate, and watch 
for the coach. Time flies, Alfred ! ” 

Yes, Sir, yes,’’ returned the young man, hurriedly. 
“ Dear Grace ! a moment ! Marion — so young and beautiful, 
so winning and so much admired, dear to my heart as nothing 
else in life is — remember ! I leave Marion to you ! ” 

She has always been a sacred charge to me, Alfred. She 
is doubly so now. I will faithful to my trust, believe 
me. 

“ I do believe it, Grace I know it well. Who could look 
upon your face, and hear your earnest voice, and not know it ! 
Ah, good Grace! If I had your well-governed heart, and 
tranquil mind, how bravely I would leave this place to-day ! ” 

‘‘Would you?'^ she answered, with a quiet smile. 

“ And yet, Grace — Sister, seems the natural word.” 

“ Use it ! ” she said quickly. “ I am glad to hear it, call 
me nothing else.” 

“ And yet. Sister, then,” said Alfred, “ Marion and I had 
better have your true and steadfast qualities serving us here, 
and making us both happier and better. I wouldn't carry 
them away, to sustain myself, if I could ! ” 

“ Coach upon the hill-top ! ” exclaimed Britain. 

“Time flies, Alfred,” said the Doctor. 

Marion had stood apart, with her eyes fixed upon the 
ground ; but this warning being given, her young lover brought 
her tenderly to where her sister stood, and gave her into her 
embrace. 


THE BATTLE OF LIFE 


272 

I have been telling Grace, dear Marion,’^ he said, that 
you are her charge ; my precious trust at parting. And when 
I come back and reclaim you, dearest, and the bright prospect 
of our married life lies stretched before us, it shall be one 
of our chief pleasures to consult how we can make Grace 
happy; how we can anticipate her wishes; how we can show 
our gratitude and love to her; how we can return her some- 
thing of the debt she will have heaped upon us.’' 

The younger sister had one hand in his; the other rested 
on her sister’s neck. She looked into that sister’s eyes, so 
calm, serene, and cheerful, with a gaze in which affection, ad- 
miration, sorrow, wonder, almost veneration were blended. 
She looked into that sister’s face, as if it were the face of 
some bright angel. Calm, serene, and cheerful, it looked back 
on her and on her lover. 

And when the time comes, as it must one day,” said Al- 
fred, — ‘‘ I wonder it has never come yet ; but Grace knows 
best, for Grace is always right, — when she will want a friend 
to open her whole heart to, and to be to her something of 
what she has been to us, — .then, Marion, how faithful we will 
prove, and what delight to us to know that she, our dear 
good sister, loves and is loved again, as we would have her ! ” 
Still the younger sister looked into her eyes, and turned 
not — even towards him. And still those honest eyes looked 
back, so calm, serene, and cheerful, on herself and on her 
lover. 

“ And when all that is past, and we are old, and living 
(as we must!) together — close together; talking often of old 
times,” said Alfred — “ these shall be our favourite times 
among them — this day most of all; and telling each other 
what we thought and felt, and hoped and feared, at parting; 
and how we couldn’t bear to say good-bye — ” 

“ Coach coming through the wood,” cried Britain. 

Yes 1 I am ready — and how we met again, so happily, 
in spite of all; we’ll make this day the happiest in all the 
year, and keep it as a treble birthday. Shall we, dear?” 

“ Yes ! ” interposed the elder sister, eagerly, and with a 
radiant smile. “ Yes ! Alfred, don’t linger. There’s no time. 
Say good-bye to Marion. And Heaven be with you I ” 

He pressed the younger sister to his heart. Released from 


THE BATTLE OF LIFE 


273 

his embrace, she again clung to her sister; and her eyes, with 
the same blended look, again sought those so calm, serene, and 
cheerful. 

“ Farewell, my boy ! ” said the Doctor. “ To talk about any 
serious correspondence or serious affections, and engagements 
and so forth, in such a — ha, ha, ha! — you know what I mean 
— why that, of course, would be sheer nonsense. All I can 
say is, that if you and Marion should continue in the same 
foolish minds, I shall not object to have you for a son-in-law 
one of these days.” 

Over the bridge ! ” cried Britain. 

Let it come 1 ” said Alfred, wringing the Doctor’s hand 
stoutly. “ Think of me sometimes, my old friend and 
guardian, as seriously as you can! Adieu, Mr. Snitchey! 
Farewell, Mr. Craggs ! ” 

“ Coming down the road ! ” cried Britain. 

“ A kiss of Clemency Newcome for long acquaintance’ sake 
— shake hands, Britain — Marion, dearest heart, good-bye ! 
Sister Grace ! remember ! ” 

The quiet household figure, and the face so beautiful in 
its serenity, were turned towards him in reply; but Marion’s 
look and attitude remained unchanged. 

The coach was at the gate. There was a bustle with the 
luggage. The coach drove away. Marion never moved. 

He waves his hat to you, my love,” said Grace. “ Your 
chosen husband, darling. Look ! ” 

The younger sister raised her head, and, for a moment, 
turned it. Then turning back again, and fully meeting, for 
the first time, those calm eyes, fell sobbing on her neck. 

“ Oh, Grace. God bless you ! But I cannot bear to see 
it, Grace ! It breaks my heart.” 


PART THE SECOND 

S NITCHEY and Craggs had a snug little office on the old 
battle-ground, where they drove a snug little business, 
and fought a great many small pitched battles for a great 
many contending parties. Though it could hardly be said of 
these conflicts that they were running fights — for in truth 


THE BATTLE OF LIFE 


274 

they generally proceeded at a snail’s pace — the part the Firm 
had in them came so far within that general denomination, 
that now they took a shot at this Plaintiff, and now aimed a 
chop at that Defendant, now made a heavy charge at an estate 
in Chancery, and now had some light skirmishing among an 
irregular body of small debtors, just as the occasion served, 
and the enemy happened to present himself. The Gazette 
was an important and profitable feature in some of their fields, 
as well as in fields of greater renown; and in most of the 
Actions wherein they showed their generalship, it was after- 
wards observed by the combatants that they had had great 
difficulty in making each other out, or in knowing with 
any degree of distinctness what they were about, in conse- 
quence of the vast amount €>f smoke by which they were sur- 
rounded. 

The offices of Messrs. Snitchey and Craggs stood convenient 
with an open door, down two smooth steps in the market- 
place; so that any angry farmer inclining towards hot water, 
might tumble into it at once. Their special council-chamber 
and hall of conference was an old back room upstairs, with 
a low dark ceiling, which seemed to be knitting its brows 
gloomily in the consideration of tangled points of law. It 
was furnished with some high-backed leathern chairs, gar- 
nished with great goggle-eyed brass nails, of which, every 
here and there, two or three had fallen out ; or had been picked 
out, perhaps, by the wandering thumbs and forefingers of 
bewildered clients. There was a framed print of a great 
judge in it, every curl in whose dreadful wig had made a man’s 
hair stand on end. Bales of papers filled the dusty closets, 
shelves, and tables ; and round the wainscot there were tiers 
of boxes, padlocked and fireproof, with people’s names painted 
outside, which anxious visitors felt themselves, by cruel en- 
chantment, obliged to spell backwards and forwards, and to 
make anagrams of, while they sat, seeming to listen to Snitchey 
and Craggs, without comprehending one word of what they 
said. 

Snitchey and Craggs had each, in private life as in profes- 
sional existence, a partner of his own. Snitchey and Craggs 
were the best friends in the world, and had a real confidence in 
one another ; but Mrs. Snitchey, by a dispensation not uncom- 


THE BATTLE OF LIFE 275 

mon in the affairs of life, was, on principle, suspicious of Mr. 
Craggs; and Mrs. Craggs was, on principle, suspicious of 
Mr. Snitchey. Your Snitcheys indeed,” the latter lady 
would observe, sometimes, to Mr. Craggs; using that im- 
aginative plural as if in disparagement of an objectionable 
pair of pantaloons, or other articles not possessed of a singu- 
lar number ; “ I don’t see what you want with your Snitcheys, 
for my part. You trust a great deal too much to your 
Snitcheys, / think, and I hope you may never find my words 
come true.” While Mrs. Snitchey would observe to Mr. 
Snitchey, of Craggs, “ that if ever he was led away by man he 
was led away by that man; and that if ever she read a 
double purpose in a mortal eye, she read that purpose in 
Craggs’s eye.” Notwithstanding this, however, they were all 
very good friends in general: and Mrs. Snitchey and Mrs. 
Craggs maintained a close bond of alliance against “ the of- 
fice,” which they both considered a Blue chamber, and com- 
mon enemy, full of dangerous (because unknown) machina- 
tions. 

In this office, nevertheless, Snitchey and Craggs made honey 
for their several hives. Here sometimes they would linger, 
of a fine evening, at the window of their council-chamber 
overlooking the old battle-ground, and wonder (but that was 
generally at assize time, when much business had made them 
sentimental) at the folly of mankind, who couldn’t always 
be at peace with one another, and go to law com- 
fortably. Here days, and weeks, and months, and years, 
passed over them; their calendar, the gradually diminishing 
number of brass nails in the leathern chairs, and the increas- 
ing bulk of papers on the tables. Here nearly three years’ 
flight had thinned the one and swelled the other, since the 
breakfast in the orchard; when they sat together in consulta- 
tion, at night. 

Not alone; but with a man of thirty, or about that time 
of life, negligently dressed, and somewhat haggard in the 
face, but well-made, well-attired, and well-looking, who sat 
in the arm-chair of state, with one hand in his breast, and the 
other in his dishevelled hair, pondering moodily. Messrs. 
Snitchey and Craggs sat opposite each other at a neighbouring 
desk. One of the fire-proof boxes, unpadlocked and opened, 


THE BATTLE OF LIFE 


276 

was upon it; a part of its contents lay strewn upon the table, 
and the rest was then in course of passing through the hands 
of Mr. Snitchey, who brought it to the candle, document by 
document, looked at every paper singly, as he produced it, 
shook his head, and handed it to Mr. Craggs, who looked it 
over also, shook his head, and laid it down. Sometimes they 
would stop, and shaking their heads in concert, look towards 
the abstracted client ; and the name on the box being Michael 
Warden, Esquire, we may conclude from these premises that 
the name and the box were both his, and that the affairs of 
Michael Warden, Esquire, were in a bad way. 

“ That’s all,” said Mr. Snitchey, turning up the last paper. 
‘‘ Really there’s no other resource. No other resource.” 

All lost, spent, wasted, pawned, borrowed, and sold, eh ? ” 
said the client, looking up. 

''All,” returned Mr. Snitchey. 

" Nothing else to be done, you say ? ” 

" Nothing at all.” 

The client bit his nails, and pondered again. 

"And I am not even personally safe in England? You 
hold to that ; do you ? ” 

" In no part of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and 
Ireland,” replied Mr. Snitchey. 

" A mere prodigal son with no father to go back to, no 
swine to keep, and no husks to share with them ? Eh ? ” 
pursued the client, rocking one leg over the other, and search- 
ing the ground with his eyes. 

Mr. Snitchey coughed, as if to deprecate the being sup- 
posed to participate in any figurative illustration of a legal 
position. Mr. Craggs, as if to express that it was a partner- 
ship view of the subject, also coughed. 

" Ruined at thirty ! ” said the client. " Humph ! ” 

" Not ruined, Mr. Warden,” returned Snitchey. " Not so 
bad as that. You have done a good deal towards it, I must 
say, but you are not ruined. A little nursing — ” 

" A little Devil,” said the client. 

" Mr. Craggs,” said Snitchey, " will you oblige me with 
a pinch of snuff? Thank you. Sir.” 

As the imperturbable lawyer applied it to his nose, with 
great apparent relish and a perfect absorption of his atten- 


THE BATTLE OF LIFE 277 

tion in the proceeding, the client gradually broke into a smile, 
and, looking up, said: 

'‘You talk of nursing. How long nursing?” 

" How long nursing ? ” repeated Snitchey, dusting the snuff 
from his fingers, and making a slow calculation in his mind. 
“ For your involved estate. Sir? In good hands? S. and C’s, 
say? Six or seven years.” 

"To starve for six or seven years ! ” said the client with 
a fretful laugh, and an impatient change of his position. 

" To starve for six or seven years, Mr. Warden,” said 
Snitchey, " would be very uncommon indeed. You might 
get another estate by showing yourself, the while. But we 
don’t think you could do it — speaking for Self and Craggs — 
and consequently don’t advise it.” 

" What do you advise ? ” 

" Nursing, I say,” repeated Snitchey. " Some few years 
of nursing by Self and Craggs would bring it round. But 
to enable us to make terms, and hold terms, and you to 
keep terms, you must go away, you must live abroad. As 
to starvation, we could ensure you some hundreds a year 
to starve upon, even in the beginning, I dare say, Mr. War- 
den.” 

" Hundreds,” said the client. " And I have spent thou- 
sands ! ” 

" That,” retorted Mr. Snitchey, putting the papers slowly 
back into the cast-iron box, " there is no doubt about. No 
doubt a — bout,” he repeated to himself, as he thoughtfully pur- 
sued his occupation. 

The lawyer very likely knew his man; at any rate his 
dry, shrewd, whimsical manner, had a favourable influence 
upon the client’s moody state, and disposed him to be more 
free and unreserved. Or perhaps the client knew his man, 
and had elicited such encouragement as he had received, to 
render some purpose he was about to disclose the more de- 
fensible in appearance. Gradually raising his head, he sat 
looking at his immovable adviser with a smile, which pres- 
ently broke into a laugh. 

"After all,” he said, "my iron-headed friend — ” 

Mr. Snitchey pointed out his partner. " Self and — excuse 
me— Craggs.” 


THE BATTLE OF LIFE 


278 

“ I beg Mr. Craggs’s pardon/’ said the client. “ After all, 
my iron-headed friends,” he leaned forward in his chair, and 
dropped his voice a little, “ you don’t know half my ruin 
yet.” 

Mr. Snitchey stopped and stared at him. Mr. Craggs 
also stared. 

“ I am not only deep in debt,” said the client, but I am 
deep in — ” 

“ Not in love ! ” cried Snitchey. 

“ Yes ! ” said the client, falling back in his chair, and sur- 
veying the Firm with his hands in his pockets. Deep in 
love.” 

“ And not with an heiress, Sir ? ” said Snitchey. 

‘‘ Not with an heiress.” 

“ Not a rich lady ? ” 

Not a rich lady that I know of — except in beauty and 
merit.” 

“A single lady, I trust?” said Mr. Snitchey, with great 
expression. 

“ Certainly.” 

“ It’s not one of Doctor Jeddler’s daughters? ” said Snitchey, 
suddenly squaring his elbows on his knees, and advancing his 
face at least a yard. 

“ Yes ! ” returned the client. 

‘‘Not his younger daughter?” said Snitchey. 

“ Yes ! ” returned the client. 

“ Mr. Craggs,” said Snitchey, much relieved, “ will you 
oblige me with another pinch of snuff? Thank you. I am 
happy to say it don’t signify, Mr. Warden; she’s engaged. 
Sir, she’s bespoke. My partner can corroborate me. We 
know the fact.” 

“We know the fact,” repeated Craggs. 

“ Why, so do I perhaps,” returned the client quietly. 
“ What of that ! Are you men of the world, and did you 
never hear of a woman changing her mind ? ” 

“ There certainly have been actions for breach,” said Mr. 
Snitchey, “ brought against both spinsters and widows, but, 
in the majority of cases — ” 

“ Cases ! ” interposed the client, impatiently. “ Don’t talk 
to me of cases. The general precedent is in a much larger 


THE BATTLE OF LIFE 


279 

t 

volume than any of your law books. Besides, do you think 
I have lived six weeks in the Doctor’s house for nothing?” 

“ I think, Sir,” observed Mr. Snitchey, gravely addressing 
himself to his partner, that of all the scrapes Mr. Warden’s 
horses have brought him into at one time and another — ^and 
they have been pretty numerous, and pretty expensive, as none 
know better than himself and you and I — the worst scrape 
may turn out to be, if he talks in this way, his having been 
ever left by one of them at the Doctor’s garden wall, with 
three broken ribs, a snapped collar-bone, and the Lord knows 
how many bruises. We didn’t think so much of it, at the 
time when we knew he was going on well under the Doctor’s 
hands and roof; but it looks bad now, Sir. Bad! It looks 
very bad. Doctor Jeddler too — our client, Mr. Graggs.” 

Mr. Alfred Heathfield too — a sort of client, Mr. Snitchey,” 
said Graggs. 

“ Mr. Michael Warden too, a kind of client,” said the care- 
less visitor, and no bad one either ; having played the fool 
for ten or twelve years. However, Mr. Michael Warden 
has sown his wild oats now — there’s their crop, in that box; 
and he means to repent and be wise. And in proof of it, 
Mr. Michael Warden means, if he can, to marry Marion, the 
Doctor’s lovely daughter, and to carry her away with him.” 

Really, Mr. Graggs,” Snitchey began. 

Really, Mr. Snitchey, and Mr. Graggs, partners both,” 
said the client, interrupting him; ‘‘you know your duty to 
your clients, and you know well enough, I am sure, that 
it is no part of it to interfere in a mere love affair, which I 
am obliged to confide to you. I am not going to carry the 
young lady off, without her own consent. There’s nothing 
illegal in it. I never was Mr. Heathfield’s bosom friend. 
I violate no confidence of his. I love where he loves, and 
I mean to win where he would win, if I can.” 

“ He can’t, Mr. Graggs,” said Snitchey, evidently anxious 
and discomfited. “ He can’t do it. Sir. She dotes on Mr. 
Alfred.” 

“ Does she ? ” returned the client. 

“ Mr. Graggs, she dotes on him. Sir,” persisted Snitchey. 

“ I didn’t live six weeks, some few months ago, in the 
Doctor’s house for nothing; and I doubted that soon,” ob- 


28 o 


THE BATTLE OF LIFE 


served the client. “ She would have doted on him, if her 
sister could have brought it about ; but I watched them. 
Marion avoided his name, avoided the subject: shrank from 
the least allusion to it, with evident distress.’' 

“ Why should she, Mr. Graggs, you know ? Why should 
she. Sir?” inquired Snitchey. 

“ I don’t know why she should, though there are many 
likely reasons,” said the client, smiling at the attention and 
perplexity expressed in Mr. Snitchey’s shining eye, and at 
his cautious way of carrying on the conversation, and making 
himself informed upon the subject; “but I know she does. 
She was very young when she made the engagement — if it 
may be called one, I am not even sure of that — and has re- 
pented of it, perhaps. Perhaps — it seems a foppish thing to 
say, but upon my soul I don’t mean it in that light — she may 
have fallen in love with me, as I have fallen in love with her.” 

“ He, he ! Mr. Alfred, her old playfellow too, you remem- 
ber, Mr. Graggs,” said Snitchey, with a discontented laugh: 
“ knew her almost from a baby ! ” 

“ Which makes it the more probable that she may be tired 
of his idea,” calmly pursued the client, “ and not indisposed 
to exchange it for the newer one of another lover, who pre- 
sents himself (or is presented by his horse) under romantic 
circumstances; has the not unfavourable reputation — with a 
country girl — of having lived thoughtlessly and gaily, without 
doing much harm to anybody; and who, for his youth and 
figure, and so forth — this may seem foppish again, but upon 
my soul I don’t mean it in that light — might perhaps pass 
muster in a crowd with Mr. Alfred himself.” 

There was no gainsaying the last clause, certainly; and 
Mr. Snitchey, glancing at him, thought so. There was some- 
thing naturally graceful and pleasant in the very carelessness 
of his air. It seemed to suggest, of his comely face and 
well-knit figure, that they might be greatly better if he chose : 
and that, once roused and made earnest (but he never had 
been earnest yet), he could be full of fire and purpose. “A 
dangerous sort of libertine,” thought the shrewd lawyer, “ to 
seem to catch the spark he wants from a young lady’s eyes.” 

“ Now, observe, Snitchey,” he continued, arising and tak- 
ing him by the button, “ and Graggs,” taking him by the 


THE BATTLE OF LIFE 281 

button also^ and placing one partner on either side of him, 
so that neither might evade him. I don’t ask you for any 
advice. You are right to keep quite aloof from all parties 
in such a matter, which is not one in which grave men like 
you could interfere, on any side. I am briefly going to review 
in half-a-dozen words, my position and intention, and then I 
shall leave it to you to do the best for me, in money matters, 
that you can: seeing, that, if I run away with the Doctor’s 
beautiful daughter (as I hope to do, and to become another 
man under her bright influence), it will be, for the moment, 
more chargeable than running away alone. But I shall soon 
make all that up in an altered life.” 

‘‘ I think it will be better not to hear this, Mr. Craggs ? ” 
said Snitchey, looking at him across the client. 

'‘I think not,” said Craggs. — Both listening attentively. 

Well ! You needn’t hear it,” replied their client. “ I’ll 
mention it, however. I don’t mean to ask the Doctor’s con- 
sent, because he wouldn’t give it to me. But I mean to do 
the Doctor no wrong or harm, because (besides there being 
nothing serious in such trifles, as he says) I hope to rescue 
his child, my Marion, from what I see — I know — she dreads, 
and contemplates with misery: that is, the return of this 
old lover. If anything in the world is true, it is true that 
she dreads his return. Nobody is injured so far. I am so 
harried and worried here just now, that I lead the life of a 
flying-fish ; skulk about in the dark, am shut out of my own 
house, and warned off my own grounds: but that house, and 
those grounds, and many an acre besides, will come back 
home one day, as you know and say; and Marion will prob- 
ably be richer — on your showing, who are never sanguine — 
ten years hence as my wife, than as the wife of Alfred Heath- 
field, whose return she dreads (remember that), and in whom 
or in any man, my passion is not surpassed. Who is injured 
yet? It is a fair case throughout. My right is as good as 
his, if she decide in my favour; and I will try my right by 
her alone. You will like to know no more after this, and I 
will tell you no more. Now you know my purpose, and wants. 
When must I leave here ? ” 

In a week,” said Snitchey. “ Mr. Craggs ? — ” 

'' Is something less, I should sa^,” responded Craggs, 


282 


THE BATTLE OF LIFE 


“ In a month/’ said the client, after attentively watching 
the two faces. “ This day month. To-day is Thursday. 
Succeed or fail, on this day month I go.” 

“ It’s too long a delay,” said Snitchey ; much too long. 
But let it be so. I thought he’d have stipulated for three,” 
he murmured to himself. ‘‘Are you going? Good night, 
Sir.” 

“ Good night ! ” returned the client, shaking hands with the 
Firm. “ You’ll live to see me making a good use of riches 
yet. Henceforth, the star of my destiny is, Marion ! ” 

“Take care of the stairs. Sir,” replied Snitchey; “for she 
don’t shine there. Good night ! ” 

“ Good night ! ” 

So they both stood at the stair-head with a pair of office- 
candles, watching him down; and when he had gone away, 
stood looking at each other. 

“ What do you think of all this, Mr. Graggs? ” said Snitchey. 

Mr. Graggs shook his head. 

“ It was our opinion, on the day when that release was 
executed, that there was something curious in the parting 
of that pair, I recollect,” said Snitchey. 

“ It was,” said Mr. Graggs. 

“ Perhaps he deceives himself altogether,” pursued Mr. 
Snitchey, locking up the fireproof box, and putting it away; 
“ or if he don’t, a little bit of fickleness and perfidy is not a 
miracle, Mr. Graggs. And yet I thought that pretty face 
was very true. I thought,” said Mr. Snitchey, putting on his 
great-coat (for the weather was very cold), drawing on his 
gloves, and snuffing out one candle, “ that I had even seen her 
character becoming stronger and more resolved of late. More 
like her sister’s.” 

“ Mrs. Graggs was of the same opinion,” returned Graggs. 

“ I’d really give a trifle to-night,” observed Mr. Snitchey, 
who was a good-natured man, “ if I could believe that Mr. 
Warden was reckoning without his host; but light-headed, 
capricious, and unballasted as he is, he knows something of 
the world and its people (he ought to, for he has bought 
what he does know, dear enough) ; and I can’t quite think 
that. We had better not interfere: we can do nothing, Mr. 
Graggs, but keep quiet.” 


THE BATTLE OF LIFE 283 

** Nothing/' returned Craggs. 

Our friend the Doctor makes light of such things/' said 
Mr. Snitchey, shaking his head. “ I hope he mayn’t stand in 
need of his philosophy. Our friend Alfred talks of the 
battle of life," he shook his head again, I hope he mayn't 
be cut down early in the day. Have you got your hat, Mr. 
Craggs? I am going to put the other candle out." 

Mr. Craggs replying in the affirmative, Mr. Snitchey suited 
the action to the word, and they groped their way out of the 
council-chamber: now as dark as the subject, or the law in 
general. 

My story passes to a quiet little study, where, on that same 
night, the sisters and the hale old Doctor sat by a cheerful 
fireside. Grace was working at her needle. Marion read 
aloud from a book before her. The Doctor, in his dressing- 
gown and slippers, with his feet spread out upon the warm 
rug, leaned back in his easy-chair, and listened to the book, 
and looked upon his daughters. 

They were very beautiful to look upon. Two better faces 
for a fireside, never made a fireside bright and sacred. Some- 
thing of the diflference between them had been softened down 
in three years' time; and enthroned upon the clear brow of 
the younger sister, looking through her eyes, and thrilling in 
her voice, was the same earnest nature that her own mother- 
less youth had ripened in the elder sister long ago. But she 
still appeared at once the lovelier and weaker of the two ; still 
seemed to rest her head upon her sister's breast, and put 
her trust in her, and look into her eyes for counsel and re- 
liance. Those loving eyes, so calm, serene, and cheerful, as 
of old. 

“ ' And being in her own home,' " read Marion, from the 
book ; ' her home made exquisitely dear by these remem- 

brances, she now began to know that the great trial of her 
heart must soon come on, and could not be delayed. O 
Home, our comforter and friend when others fall away, to 
part with whom, at any step between the cradle and the 
grave — 

Marion, my love ! " said Grace. 

“ Why, Puss ! ” exclaimed her father, '' what’s the matter? ” 


THE BATTLE OF LIFE 


284 

She put her hand upon the hand her sister stretched to- 
wards her, and read on ; her voice still faltering and trembling, 
though she made an effort to command it when thus inter- 
rupted. 

“ ‘ To part with whom, at any step between the cradle and 
the grave, is always sorrowful. O Home, so true to us, so 
often slighted in return, be lenient to them that turn away 
from thee, and do not haunt their erring footsteps too re- 
proachfully! Let no kind looks, no well-remembered smiles, 
be seen upon thy phantom face. Let no ray of affection, wel- 
come, gentleness, forbearance, cordiality, shine from thy white 
head. Let no old loving word or tone rise up in judgment 
against thy deserter; but if thou canst look harshly and 
severely, do, in mercy to the Penitent I ’ ” 

'' Dear Marion, read no more to-night,” said Grace — for 
she was weeping. 

‘‘ I cannot,” she replied, and closed the book. The words 
seem all on fire I ” 

The Doctor was amused at this ; and laughed as he patted 
her on the head. 

‘‘What! overcome by a story-book!” said Doctor Jeddler. 
“ Print and paper ! Well, well, it’s all one. It’s as rational 
to make a serious matter of print and paper as of anything 
else. But dry your eyes, love, dry your eyes. I dare say 
the heroine has got home again long ago, and made it up 
all round — and if she hasn’t, a real home is only four walls; 
and a fictitious one, mere rags and ink. What’s the matter 
now ? ” 

“ It’s only me. Mister,” said Clemency, putting in her head 
at the door. 

“And what’s the matter with you?'' said the Doctor. 

“ Oh, bless you, nothing an’t the matter with me,” returned 
Clemency — and truly too, to judge from her well-soaped 
face, in which there gleamed as usual the very soul of good hu- 
mour, which, ungainly as she was, made her quite engaging. 
Abrasions on the elbows are not generally understood, it is true, 
to range within that class of personal charms called beauty- 
spots. But it is better, going through the world, to have the 
arms chafed in that narrow passage, than the temper: and 
Clemency’s was sound and whole as any beauty’s in the land, 


THE BATTLE OF LIFE 285 

‘‘ Nothing an’t the matter with me,” said Clemency, enter- 
ing, ‘‘ but — come a little closer, Mister.” 

The Doctor, in some astonishment, complied with this in- 
vitation. 

“ You said I wasn’t to give you one before them, you know,” 
said Clemency. 

A novice in the family might have supposed, from her ex- 
traordinary ogling as she said it, as well as from a singular 
rapture or ecstasy which pervaded her elbows, as if she were 
embracing herself, that “ one,” in its most favourable inter- 
pretation, meant a chaste salute. Indeed the Doctor himself 
seemed alarmed, for the moment; but quickly regained his 
composure, as Clemency, having had recourse to both her 
pockets — beginning with the right one, going back to the 
wrong one, and afterwards coming back to the right one 
again — produced a letter from the Post-office. 

“ Britain was riding by on a errand,” she chuckled, hand- 
ing it to the Doctor, ‘‘ and see the Mail come in, and waited 
for it. There’s A. H. in the corner. Mr. Alfred’s on his 
journey home, I bet. We shall have a wedding in the house 
— there was two spoons in my saucer this morning. O Luck, 
how slow he opens it ! ” 

All this she delivered, by way of soliloquy, gradually rising 
higher and higher on tiptoe, in her impatience to hear the 
news, and making a corkscrew of her apron, and a bottle of 
her mouth. At last, arriving at a climax of suspense, and 
seeing the Doctor still engaged in the perusal of the letter, 
she came down flat upon the soles of her feet again, and cast 
her apron, as a veil, over her head, in a mute despair, and 
inability to bear it any longer. 

Here ! Girls ! ” cried the Doctor. “ I can’t help it : I 
never could keep a secret in my life. There are not many 
secrets, indeed, worth being kept in such a — well ! never mind 
that. Alfred’s coming home, my dears, directly.” 

Directly ! ” exclaimed Marion. 

“ What ! The story-book is soon forgotten ! ” said the Doc- 
tor, pinching her cheek. “ I thought the news would dry those 
tears. Yes. ' Let it be a surprise,’ he says, here. But I 
can’t let it be a surprise. He must have a welcome.” 

“ Directly ! ” repeated Marion. 


286 


THE BATTLE OF LIFE 


“ Why, perhaps not what your impatience calls ^ directly,’ ” 
returned the Doctor ; “ but pretty soon too. Let us see. Let 
us see. To-day is Thursday, is it not? Then he promises to 
be here, this day month.” 

“ This day month ! ” repeated Marion, softly. 

‘‘ A gay day and a holiday for us,” said the cheerful voice 
of her sister Grace, kissing her in congratulation. “ Long 
looked forward to, dearest, and come at last.” 

She answered with a smile; a mournful smile, but full of 
sisterly affection: and as she looked in her sister’s face, and 
listened to the quiet music of her voice, picturing the hap- 
piness of this return, her own face glowed with hope and 

joy* 

And with a something else: a something shining more 
and more through all the rest of its expression: for which 
I have no name. It was not exultation, triumph, proud en- 
thusiasm. They are not so calmly shown. It was not love 
and gratitude alone, though love and gratitude were part of 
it. It emanated from no sordid thought, for sordid thoughts 
do not light up the brow, and hover on the lips, and move the 
spirit, like a fluttered light, until the sympathetic figure trem- 
bles. 

Doctor Jeddler, in spite of his system of philosophy — which 
he was continually contradicting and denying in practice, but 
more famous philosophers have done that — could not help 
having as much interest in the return of his old ward and 
pupil, as if it had been a serious event. So he sat himself 
down in his easy-chair again, stretched out his slippered feet 
once more upon the rug, read the letter over and over a great 
many times, and talked it over more times still. 

‘‘Ah! The day was,” said the Doctor, looking at the fire, 
“ when you and he, Grace, used to trot about arm-in-arm, 
in his holiday time, like a couple of walking dolls. You re- 
member ? ” 

“ I remember,” she answered, with her pleasant laugh, and 
plying her needle busily. 

“ This day month, indeed ? ” mused the Doctor. “ That 
hardly seems a twelvemonth ago. And where was my little 
Marion then ! ” 

“ Never far from her sister,” said Marion, cheerily, “ how- 


THE BATTLE OF LIFE 287 

ever little. Grace was everything to me, even when she was 
a young child herself.’' 

“ True, Puss, true,” returned the Doctor. '' She was a staid 
little woman, was Grace, and a wise housekeeper, and a busy, 
quiet, pleasant body ; bearing with our humours and antici- 
pating our wishes, and always ready to forget her own, even 
in those times. I never knew you positive or obstinate, Grace, 
my darling, even then, on any subject but one.” 

‘‘ I am afraid I have changed sadly for the worse, since,” 
laughed Grace, still busy at her work. “ What was that one, 
father ? ” 

“ Alfred, of course,” said the Doctor. “ Nothing would 
serve you but you must be called Alfred’s wife ; so we called 
you Alfred’s wife; and you liked it better, I believe (odd as 
it seems now), than being called a Duchess, if we could have 
made you one.” 

“ Indeed ! ” said Grace, placidly. 

“ Why, don’t you remember ? ” inquired the Doctor. 

I think I remember something of it,” she returned, but 
not much. It’s so long ago.” And as she sat at work, she 
hummed the burden of an old song, which the Doctor liked. 

“ Alfred will find a real wife soon,” she said, breaking 
off ; “ and that will be a happy time indeed for all of us. 
My three years’ trust is nearly at an end, Marion. It has 
been a very easy one. I shall tell Alfred, when I give you 
back to him, that you have loved him dearly all the time, 
and that he has never once needed my good services. May 
I tell him so, love? ” 

“ Tell him, dear Grace,” replied Marion, that there never 
was a trust so generously, nobly, steadfastly discharged; and 
that I have loved you, all the time, dearer and dearer every 
day ; and Oh ! how dearly now ! ” 

“ Nay,” said her cheerful sister, returning her embrace, 
“ I can scarcely tell him that ; we will leave my deserts to 
Alfred’s imagination. It will be liberal enough, dear Marion ; 
like your own.” 

With that she resumed the work she had for a moment laid 
down, when her sister spoke so fervently: and with it the old 
song the Doctor liked to hear. And the Doctor, still reposing 
in his easy-chair, with his slippered feet stretched out before 


288 


THE BATTLE OF LIFE 


him on the rug, listened to the tune, and beat time on his knee 
with Alfred’s letter, and looked at his two daughters, and 
thought that among the many trifles of the trifling world, these 
trifles were agreeable enough. 

Clemency Newcome, in the meantime, having accomplished 
her mission and lingered in the room until she had made her- 
self a party to the news, descended to the kitchen, where her 
coadjutor, Mr. Britain, was regaling after supper, surrounded 
by such a plentiful collection of bright potlids, well-scoured 
saucepans, burnished dinner-covers, gleaming kettles, and other 
tokens of her industrious habits, arranged upon the walls and 
shelves, that he sat as in the centre of a hall of mirrors. The 
majority did not give forth very flattering portraits of him, 
certainly; nor were they by any means unanimous in their 
reflections; as some made him very long-faced, others very 
broad-faced, some tolerably well-looking, others vastly ill- 
looking, according to their several manners of reflecting : which 
were as various, in respect of one fact, as those of so many 
kinds of men. But they all agreed that in the midst of them 
sat, quite at his ease, an individual with a pipe in his mouth, 
and a jug of beer at his elbow, who nodded condescendingly 
to Clemency, when she stationed herself at the same table. 

“ Well, Clemmy,” said Britain, “ how are you by this time, 
and what’s the news? ” 

Clemency told him the news, which he received very gra- 
ciously. A gracious change had come over Benjamin from 
head to foot. He was much broader, much redder, much 
more cheerful, and much jollier in all respects. It seemed as 
if his face had been tied up in a knot before, and was now 
untwisted and smoothed out. 

“ There’ll be another job for Snitchey and Craggs, I sup- 
pose,” he observed, puffing slowly at his pipe. ‘‘ More wit- 
nessing for you and me, perhaps, Clemmy ! ” 

Lor ! ” replied his fair companion, with her favourite twist 
of her favourite joints. I wish it was me, Britain ! ” 

“ Wish what was you ? ” 

A-going to be married,” said Clemency. 

Benjamin took his pipe out of his mouth and laughed 
heartily. '‘Yes! you’re a likely subject for that!” he said. 
“Poor Clem!” 


THE BATTLE OF LIFE 


289 

Clemency for her part laughed as heartily as he, and seemed 
as much amused by the idea. “ Yes,” she assented, “ Tm a 
likely subject for that; an’t I?” 

You'W never be married, you know,” said Mr. Britain, 
resuming his pipe. 

Don’t you think I ever shall though ? ” said Clemency, in 
perfect good faith. 

Mr. Britain shook his head. “Not a chance of it ! ” 

“ Only think ! ” said Clemency. “ Well ! — suppose you 
mean to, Britain, one of these days ; don’t you ? ” 

A question so abrupt, upon a subject so momentous, re- 
quired consideration. After blowing out a great cloud of 
smoke, and looking at it with his head now on this side and now 
on that, as if it were actually the question, and he were survey- 
ing it in various aspects, Mr. Britain replied that he wasn’t 
altogether clear about it, but — ^ye-es — he thought he might 
come to that at last. 

“ I wish her joy, whoever she may be! ” cried Clemency. 

“Oh, she’ll have that,” said Benjamin; “safe enough.” 

“ But she wouldn’t have led quite such a joyful life as she 
will lead, and wouldn’t have had quite such a sociable sort of 
husband as she will have,” said Clemency, spreading herself 
half over the table, and staring retrospectively at the candle, 
“ if it hadn’t been for — not that I went to do it, for it was 
accidental, I am sure — if it hadn’t been for me; now would 
she, Britain?” 

“ Certainly not,” returned Mr. Britain, by this time in that 
high state of appreciation of his pipe, when a man can open 
his mouth but a very little way for speaking purposes; and 
sitting luxuriously immovable in his chair, can afford to turn 
only his eyes towards a companion, and that very passively 
and gravely. “ Oh ! I’m greatly beholden to you, you know, 
Clem.” 

“ Lor, how nice that is to think of ! ” said Clemency. 

At the same time, bringing her thoughts as well as her sight 
to bear upon the candle-grease, and becoming abruptly reminis- 
cent of its healing qualities as a balsam, she anointed her left 
elbow with a plentiful application of that remedy. 

“ You see I’ve made a good many investigations of one 
sort and another in my time,” pursued Mr. Britain, with the 


THE BATTLE OF LIFE 


290 

profundity of a sage ; having been always of an inquiring 
turn of mind; and Fve read a good many books about the 
general Rights of things and Wrongs of things, for I went into 
the literary line myself, when I began life.” 

“ Did you though ! ” cried the admiring Clemency. 

Yes,” said Mr. Britain ; I was hid for the best part of 
two years behind a bookstall, ready to fly out if anybody 
pocketed a volume; and after that, I was light porter to a 
stay and mantua-maker, in which capacity I was employed to 
carry about, in oilskin baskets, nothing but deceptions — which 
soured my spirits and disturbed my confidence in human na- 
ture; and after that, I heard a world of discussions in this 
house, which soured my spirits fresh; and my opinion after 
all is, that, as a safe and comfortable sweetener of the same, 
and as a pleasant guide through life, there’s nothing like a 
nutmeg-grater.” 

Clemency was about to offer a suggestion, but he stopped 
her by anticipating it. 

Com-bined,” he added gravely, with a thimble.” 

“ Do as you wold, you know, and cetrer, eh ! ” observed 
Clemency, folding her arms comfortably in her delight at this 
avowal, and patting her elbows. Such a short cut, an’t it? ” 

“ I’m not sure,” said Mr. Britain, “ that it’s what would be 
considered good philosophy. I’ve my doubts about that ; but it 
wears well, and saves a quantity of snarling, which the genuine 
article don’t always.” 

See how you used to go on once, yourself, you know ! ” 
said Clemency. 

Ah ! ” said Mr. Britain. But the most extraordinary 
thing, Clemmy, is that I should live to be brought round, 
through you. That’s the strange part of it. Through you! 
Why, I suppose you haven’t so much as half an idea in your 
head.” 

Clemency, without taking the least offence, shook it, and 
laughed, and hugged herself, and said, ‘‘ No, she didn’t sup- 
pose she had.” 

“ I’m pretty sure of it,” said Mr. Britain. 

'' Oh I I dare say you’re right,” said Clemency. “ I don’t 
pretend to none. I don’t want any.” 


THE BATTLE OF LIFE 291 

Benjamin took his pipe from his lips, and laughed till the 
tears ran down his face. “ What a natural you are, Clemmy ! ” 
he said, shaking his head, with an infinite relish of the joke, 
and wiping his eyes. Clemency, without the smallest incli- 
nation to dispute it, did the like, and laughed as heartily as he. 

“ But I can’t help liking you,” said Mr. Britain ; “ you’re a 
regular good creature in your way; so shake hands, Clem. 
Whatever happens, I’ll always take notice of you, and be a 
friend to you.” 

“ Will you? ” returned Clemency. “ Well ! that’s very good 
of you.” 

“ Yes, yes,” said Mr. Britain, giving her his pipe to knock 
the ashes out of ; I’ll stand by you. Hark ! That’s a curious 
noise ! ” 

“ Noise ! ” repeated Clemency. 

A footstep outside. Somebody dropping from the wall, 
it sounded like,” said Britain. “ Are they all abed upstairs ? ” 

“ Yes, all abed by this time,” she replied. 

“ Didn’t you hear anything ? ” 

No.” 

They both listened, but heard nothing. 

“ I tell you what,” said Benjamin, taking down a lantern. 
“ I’ll have a look round before I go to bed myself, for satis- 
faction’s sake. Undo the door while I light this, Clemmy.” 

Clemency complied briskly ; but observed as she did so 
that he would only have his walk for his pains, that it was 
all his fancy, and so forth. Mr. Britain said “ very likely ; ” 
but sallied out, nevertheless, armed with the poker, and cast- 
ing the light of the lantern far and near in all directions. 

It’s as quiet as a churchyard,” said Clemency, looking 
after him ; '' and almost as ghostly too ! ” 

Glancing back into the kitchen, she cried fearfully, as a 
light figure stole into her view, “ What’s that ! ” 

Hush ! ” said Marion, in an agitated whisper. ‘‘ You have 
always loved me, have you not ! ” 

Loved you, child ! You may be sure I have.” 

“ I am sure. And I may trust you, may I not? There is 
no one else just now, in whom I can trust.” 

Yes,” said Clemency, with all her heart. 


THE BATTLE OF LIFE 


292 

“ There is some one out there,” pointing to the door, ** whom 
I must see, and speak with, to-night. Michael Warden, for 
God’s sake retire ! Not now ! ” 

Clemency started with surprise and trouble as, following 
the direction of the speaker’s eyes, she saw a dark figure 
standing in the doorway. 

In another moment you may be discovered,” said Marion. 
“ Not now ! Wait, if you can, in some concealment. I will 
come, presently.” 

He waved his hand to her, and was gone. 

“ Don’t go to bed. Wait here for me ! ” said Marion, 
hurriedly. “ I have been seeking to speak to you for an hour 
past. Oh, be true to me ! ” 

Eagerly seizing her bewildered hand, and pressing it with 
both her own to her breast — an action more expressive, in its 
passion of entreaty, than the most eloquent appeal in words, — 
Marion withdrew ; as the light of the returning lantern flashed 
into the room. 

“ All still and peaceable. Nobody there. Fancy, I sup- 
pose,” said Mr. Britain, as he locked and barred the door. 
“ One of the effects of having a lively imagination. Hallo ! 
Why, what’s the matter ? ” 

Clemency, who could not conceal the effects of her surprise 
and concern, was sitting in a chair: pale, and trembling from 
head to foot. 

“ Matter ! ” she repeated, chafing her hands and elbows, 
nervously, and looking anywhere but at him. “ That’s good 
in you, Britain, that is ! After going and frightening one out 
of one’s life with noise, and lanterns, and I don’t know what 
all. Matter ! Oh, yes ! ” 

“ If you’re frightened out of your life by a lantern, 
Clemmy,” said Mr. Britain, composedly blowing it out and 
hanging it up again, “ that apparition’s very soon got rid of. 
But you’re as bold as brass in general,” he said, stopping to ob- 
serve her ; ‘‘ and were, after the noise and the lantern too. 
What have you taken into your head? Not an idea, eh? ” 

But, as Clemency bade him good night very much after her 
usual fashion, and began to bustle about with a show of going 
to bed herself immediately. Little Britain, after giving utter- 
ance to the original remark that it was impossible to account 


THE BATTLE OF LIFE 293 

for a woman’s whims, bade her good night in return, and 
taking up his candle strolled drowsily away to bed. 

When all was quiet, Marion returned. 

Open the door,” she said ; “ and stand there close beside 
me, while I speak to him, outside.” 

Timid as her manner was, it still evinced a resolute and 
settled purpose, such as Clemency could not resist. She softly 
unbarred the door: but before turning the key, looked round 
on the young creature waiting to issue forth when she should 
open it. 

The face was not averted or cast down, but looked full 
upon her, in its pride of youth and beauty. Some simple 
sense of the slightness of the barrier that interposed itself 
between the happy home and honoured love of the fair girl, 
and what might be the desolation of that home, and ship- 
wreck of its dearest treasure, smote so keenly on the tender 
heart of Clemency, and so filled it to overflowing with sorrow 
and compassion, that, bursting into tears, she threw her arms 
round Marion’s neck. 

'' It’s little that I know, my dear,” cried Clemency, very 
little ; but I know that this should not be. Think of what you 
do!” 

“ I have thought of it many times,” said Marion, gently. 

'' Once more,” urged Clemency. “ Till to-morrow.” 

Marion shook her head. 

“ For Mr. Alfred’s sake,” said Clemency, with homely 
earnestness. Him that you used to love so dearly, once ! ” 

She hid her face, upon the instant, in her hands, repeating 
‘‘ Once I ” as if it rent her heart. 

Let me go out,” said Clemency, soothing her. I’ll tell 
him what you like. Don’t cross the door-step to-night. I’m 
sure no good will come of it. Oh, it was an unhappy day 
when Mr. Warden was ever brought here! Think of your 
good father, darling: of your sister.” 

“ I have,” said Marion, hastily raising her head. You 
don’t know what I do. I must speak to him. You are the 
best and truest friend in all the world for what you have said 
to me, but I must take this step. Will you go with me. Clem- 
ency,” she kissed her on her friendly face, ‘‘or shall I go 
alone ? ” 


THE BATTLE OF LIFE 


294 

Sorrowing and wondering, Clemency turned the key, and 
opened the door. Into the dark and doubtful night that lay 
beyond the threshold, Marion passed quickly, holding by her 
hand. 

In the dark night he joined her, and they spoke together 
earnestly and long: and the hand that held so fast by Clem- 
ency’s, now trembled, now turned deadly cold, now clasped 
and closed on hers, in the strong feeling of the speech it 
emphasised unconsciously. When they returned he followed 
to the door ; and paused there a moment, seized the other hand, 
and pressed it to his lips. Then stealthily withdrew. 

The door was barred and locked again, and once again 
she stood beneath her father’s roof. Not bowed down by the 
secret that she brought there, though so young ; but with that 
same expression on her face, for which I had no name before, 
and shining through her tears. 

Again she thanked and thanked her humble friend, and 
trusted to her, as she said, with confidence, implicitly. Her 
chamber safely reached, she fell upon her knees ; and with her 
secret weighing on her heart, could pray ! 

Could rise up from her prayers, so tranquil and serene, and 
bending over her fond sister in her slumber, look upon her 
face and smile: though sadly: murmuring as she kissed her 
forehead, how that Grace had been a mother to her, ever, and 
she loved her as a child ! 

Could draw the passive arm about her neck when lying 
down to rest — it seemed to cling there, of its own will, pro- 
tectingly and tenderly even in sleep — and breathe upon the 
parted lips, God bless her ! 

Could sink into a peaceful sleep, herself ; but for one dream, 
in which she cried out, in her innocent and touching voice, 
that she was quite alone, and they had all forgotten her. 

A month soon passes, even at its tardiest pace. The month 
appointed to elapse between that night and the return, was 
quick of foot, and went by, like a vapour. 

The day arrived. A raging winter day, that shook the old 
house, sometimes, as if it shivered in the blast. A day to 
make home doubly home. To give the chimney corner new 
delights. To shed a ruddier glow upon the faces gathered 


THE BATTLE OF LIFE 


295 

round the hearth ; and drew each fireside group into a closer 
and more social league, against the roaring elements with- 
out. Such a wild winter day as best prepares the way for 
shut-out night ; for curtained rooms, and cheerful looks ; 
for music, laughter, dancing, light, and jovial entertain- 
ment ! 

All these the Doctor had in store to welcome Alfred back. 
They knew that he could not arrive till night ; and they would 
make the night air ring, he said, as he approached. All his 
old friends should congregate about him. He should not miss 
a face that he had known and liked. No ! They should every 
one be there ! 

So, guests were bidden, and musicians were engaged, and 
tables spread, and floors prepared for active feet, and bountiful 
provision made, of every hospitable kind. Because it was the 
Christmas season, and his eyes were all unused to English holly 
and its sturdy green, the dancing-room was garlanded and 
hung with it ; and the red berries gleamed an English welcome 
to him, peeping from among the leaves. 

It was a busy day for all of them : a busier day for none of 
them than Grace, who noiselessly presided everywhere, and 
was the cheerful mind of all the preparations. Many a time 
that day (as well as many a time within the fleeting month 
preceding it), did Clemency glance anxiously, and almost fear- 
fully, at Marion. She saw her paler, perhaps, than usual; 
but there was a sweet composure on her face that made it 
lovelier than ever. 

At night when she was dressed, and wore upon her head 
a wreath that Grace had proudly twined about it — its mimic 
flowers were Alfred’s favourites, as Grace remembered when 
she chose them — that old expression, pensive, almost sorrow- 
ful, and yet so spiritual, high, and stirring, sat again upon her 
brow, enhanced a hundred-fold. 

“ The next wreath I adjust on this fair head, will be a mar- 
riage wreath,” said Grace ; or I am no true prophet, dear.” 

Her sister smiled, and held her in her arms. 

A moment, Grace. Don’t leave me yet. Are you sure 
that I want nothing more ? ” 

Her care was not for that. It was her sister’s face she 
thought of; and her eyes were fixed upon it, tenderly. 


THE BATTLE OF LIFE 


296 

“ My art/’ said Grace, can go no further, dear girl ; nor 
your beauty. I never saw you look so beautiful as now.” 

“ I never was so happy,” she returned. 

Ay, but there is greater happiness in store. In such 
another home, as cheerful and as bright as this looks now,” 
said Grace, “ Alfred and his young wife will soon be living.” 

She smiled again. It is a happy home, Grace, in your 
fancy. I can see it in your eyes. I know it will be happy, 
dear. How glad I am to know it.” 

“ Well,” cried the Doctor, bustling in. Here we are, all 
ready for Alfred, eh? He can’t be here until pretty late — an 
hour or so before midnight — so there’ll be plenty of time for 
making merry before he comes. He’ll not find us with the 
ice unbroken. Pile up the fire here, Britain! Let it shine 
upon the holly till it winks again. It’s a world of nonsense. 
Puss ; true lovers and all the rest of it — all nonsense ; but we’ll 
be nonsensical with the rest of ’em, and give our true lover a 
mad welcome. Upon my word ! ” said the old Doctor, looking 
at his daughters proudly, “ I’m not clear to-night, among 
other absurdities, but that I’m the father of two handsome 
girls.” 

“ All that one of them has ever done, or may do — may do, 
dearest father — to cause you pain or grief, forgive her,” said 
Marion : “ forgive her now, when her heart is full. Say that 
you forgive her. That you will forgive her. That she shall 
always share your love, and — and the rest was not said, for 
her face was hidden on the old man’s shoulder. 

“ Tut, tut, tut,” said the Doctor, gently. “ Forgive ! What 
have I to forgive? Heydey, if our true lovers come back to 
flurry us like this, we must hold ’em at a distance; we must 
send expresses out to stop ’em short upon the road, and bring 
’em on a mile or two a day, until we’re properly prepared to 
meet ’em. Kiss me, Puss. Forgive! Why, what a silly 
child you are. If you had vexed and crossed me fifty times 
a day, instead of not at all, I’d forgive you everything, but 
such a supplication. Kiss me again, Puss. There ! Prospec- 
tive and retrospective — a clear score between us. Pile up the 
fire here! Would you freeze the people on this bleak De- 
cember night ! Let us be light, and warm, and merry, or I’U 
not forgive some of you ! ” 


THE BATTLE OF LIFE 


297 

So gaily the old Doctor carried it! And the fire was piled 
up, and the lights were bright, and company arrived, and a 
murmuring of lively tongues began, and already there was a 
pleasant air of cheerful excitement stirring through all the 
house. 

More and more company came flocking in. Bright eyes 
sparkled upon Marion; smiling lips gave her joy of his re- 
turn ; sage mothers fanned themselves, and hoped she mightn’t 
be too youthful and inconstant for the quiet round of home; 
impetuous fathers fell into disgrace for too much exaltation 
of her beauty; daughters envied her; sons envied him; in- 
numerable pairs of lovers profited by the occasion; all were 
interested, animated, and expectant. 

Mr. and Mrs. Graggs came arm in arm, but Mrs. Snitchey 
came alone. “ Why, what’s become of him? inquired the 
Doctor. 

The feather of a Bird of Paradise in Mrs. Snitchey’s turban, 
trembled as if the Bird of Paradise were alive again, when 
she said that doubtless Mr. Graggs knew. She was never 
told. 

That nasty office,” said Mrs. Graggs. 

I wish it was burnt down,” said Mrs. Snitchey. 

“ He’s — he’s — ^there’s a little matter of business that keeps 
my partner rather late,” said Mr. Graggs, looking uneasily 
about him. 

‘‘ Oh — h ! Business. Don’t tell me ! ” said Mrs. Snitchey. 

“ We know what business means,” said Mrs. Graggs. 

But their not knowing what it meant, was perhaps the reason 
why Mrs. Snitchey’s Bird of Paradise feather quivered so 
portentously, and all the pendant bits on Mrs. Graggs’s ear- 
rings shook like little bells. 

“ I wonder you could come away, Mr. Graggs,” said his 
wife. 

Mr. Graggs is fortunate. I’m sure ! ” said Mrs. Snitchey. 

That office so engrosses ’em,” said Mrs. Graggs. 

A person with an office has no business to be married at 
all,” said Mrs. Snitchey. 

Then, Mrs. Snitchey said, within herself, that that look of 
hers had pierced to Graggs’s soul, and he knew it: and Mrs. 
Graggs observed, to Graggs, that “his Snitcheys ” were de- 


298 THE BATTLE OF LIFE 

ceiving him behind his back, and he would find it out when 
it was too late. 

Still, Mr. Craggs, without much heeding these remarks, 
looked uneasily about him until his eyes rested on Grace, to 
whom he immediately presented himself. 

“ Good evening, Ma’am,” said Craggs. ‘‘ You look charm- 
ingly. Your — Miss — your sister. Miss Marion, is she — ” 

Oh, she's quite well, Mr. Craggs.” 

‘‘Yes — I — is she here?” asked Craggs. 

“ Here ! Don’t you see her yonder ? Going to dance ? ” 
said Grace. 

Mr. Craggs put on his spectacles to see the better ; looked at 
her through them, for some time ; coughed ; and put them, with 
an air of satisfaction, in their sheath again, and in his 
pocket. 

Now the music struck up, and the dance commenced. The 
bright fire crackled and sparkled, rose and fell, as though it 
joined the dance itself, in right good fellowship. Sometimes 
it roared as if it would make music too. Sometimes it flashed 
and beamed as if it were the eye of the old room: it winked 
too, sometimes, like a knowing patriarch, upon the youthful 
whisperers in corners. Sometimes it sported with the holly- 
boughs; and, shining on the leaves by fits and starts, made 
them look as if they were in the cold winter night again, and 
fluttering in the wind. Sometimes its genial humour grew 
obstreperous, and passed all bounds ; and then it cast into the 
room, among the twinkling feet, with a loud burst, a shower 
of harmless little sparks, and in its exultation leaped and 
bounded, like a mad thing, up the broad old chimney. 

Another dance was near its close, when Mr. Snitchey 
touched his partner, who was looking on, upon the arm. 

Mr. Craggs started, as if his familiar had been a spectre. 

“ Is he gone? ” he asked. 

“ Hush ! He has been with me,” said Snitchey, “ for three 
hours and more. He went over everything. He looked into 
all our arrangements for him, and was very particular indeed. 
He — Humph ! ” 

The dance was finished. Marion passed close before him, 
as he spoke. She did not observe him, or his partner; but 
looked over her shoulder towards her sister in the distance, as 


THE BATTLE OF LIFE 


299 

she slowly made her way into the crowd, and passed out of 
their view. 

You see ! All safe and well,'' said Mr. Craggs. “ He 
didn't recur to that subject, I suppose?" 

“ Not a word." 

“ And is he really gone? Is he safe away ? " 

He keeps to his word. He drops down the river with the 
tide in that shell of a boat of his, and so goes out to sea on 
this dark night — a dare-devil he is — before the wind. There’s 
no such lonely road anywhere else. That's one thing. The 
tide flows, he says, an hour before midnight, about this time. 
I'm glad it's over." Mr. Snitchey wiped his forehead, which 
looked hot and anxious. 

‘‘ What do you think," said Mr. Craggs, ‘‘ about — " 

“ Hush ! " replied his cautious partner, looking straight be- 
fore him. I understand you. Don't mention names, and 
don't let us seem to be talking secrets. I don't know what to 
think ; and to tell you the truth, I don't care now. It's a great 
relief. His self-love deceived him, I suppose. Perhaps the 
young lady coquetted a little. The evidence would seem to 
point that way. Alfred not arrived ? " 

'' Not yet," said Mr. Craggs. “ Expected every minute." 

“ Good." Mr. Snitchey wiped his forehead again. It’s 
a great relief. I haven't been so nervous since we've been 
in partnership. I intend to spend the evening now, Mr. 
Craggs." 

Mrs. Craggs and Mrs. Snitchey joined them as he announced 
this intention. The Bird of Paradise was in a state of ex- 
treme vibration ; and the little bells were ringing quite audibly. 

“ It has been the theme of general comment, Mr. Snitchey," 
said Mrs. Snitchey. “ I hope the office is satisfied." 

“ Satisfied with what, my dear? " asked Mr. Snitchey. 

With the exposure of a defenceless woman to ridicule and 
remark," returned his wife. “ That is quite in the way of 
the office, that is." 

I really, myself,” said Mrs. Craggs, ‘‘ have been so long 
accustomed to connect the office with everything opposed to 
domesticity, that I am glad to know it as the avowed enemy of 
my peace. There is something honest in that, at all events." 

‘‘My dear,” urged Mr. Craggs, ‘‘your good opinion is 


300 THE BATTLE OF LIFE 

invaluable, but / never avowed that the office was the enemy 
of your peace.” 

“ No,” said Mrs. Craggs, ringing a perfect peal upon the 
little bells. “ Not you, indeed. You wouldn’t be worthy of 
the office, if you had the candour to.” 

“ As to my having been away to-night, my dear,” said Mr. 
Snitchey, giving her his arm, “ the deprivation has been mine, 
I’m sure; but, as Mr. Craggs knows — ” 

Mrs. Snitchey cut this reference very short by hitching her 
husband to a distance, and asking him to look at that man. 
To do her the favour to look at him ! 

“ At which man, my dear ? ” said Mr. Snitchey. 

“Your chosen companion; I’m no companion to you, Mr. 
Snitchey.” 

“ Yes, yes, you are, my dear,” he interposed. 

“ No, no, I’m not,” said Mrs. Snitchey, with a majestic 
smile. “ I know my station. Will you look at your chosen 
companion, Mr. Snitchey; at your referee; at the keeper of 
your secrets; at the man you trust; at your other self, in 
short.” 

The habitual association of Self with Craggs, occasioned 
Mr. Snitchey to look in that direction. 

“ If you can look that man in the eye this night,” said 
Mrs. Snitchey, “ and not know that you are deluded, prac- 
tised upon: made the victim of his arts, and bent down pros- 
trate to his will by some unaccountable fascination which it is 
impossible to explain, and against which no warning of mine 
is of the least avail : all I can say is — I pity you ! ” 

At the very same moment Mrs. Craggs was oracular on the 
cross subject. Was it possible, she said, that Craggs could so 
blind himself to his Snitcheys, as not to feel his true position? 
Did he mean to say that he had seen his Snitcheys come into 
that room, and didn’t plainly see that there was reservation, 
cunning, treachery, in the man? Would he tell her that his 
very action, when he wiped his forehead and looked so 
stealthily about him, didn’t show that there was something 
weighing on the conscience of his precious Snitcheys (if he 
had a conscience), that wouldn’t bear the light? Did any- 
body but his Snitcheys come to festive entertainments like a 
burglar? — which, by the way, was hardly a clear illustration 


THE BATTLE OF LIFE 


301 

of the case, as he had walked in very mildly at the door. And 
would he still assert to her at noonday (it being nearly mid- 
night), that his Snitcheys were to be justified through thick 
and thin, against all facts, and reason, and experience? 

Neither Snitch ey nor Craggs openly attempted to stem the 
current which had thus set in, but both were content to be 
carried gently along it, until its force abated ; which happened 
at about the same time as a general movement for a country 
dance; when Mr. Snitchey proposed himself as a partner to 
Mrs. Craggs, and Mr. Craggs gallantly offered himself to Mrs. 
Snitchey ; and after some such slight evasions as “ why don’t 
you ask somebody else ? ” and “ you’ll be glad, I know, if I 
decline,” and I wonder you can dance out of the office ” (but 
this jocosely now), each lady graciously accepted, and took 
her place. 

It was an old custom among them, indeed, to do so, and 
to pair off, in like manner, at dinners and suppers; for they 
were excellent friends, and on a footing of easy familiarity. 
Perhaps the false Craggs and the wicked Snitchey were a 
recognised fiction with the two wives, as Doe and Roe, inces- 
santly running up and down bailiwicks, were with the two 
husbands: or perhaps the ladies had instituted, and taken 
upon themselves, these two shares in the business, rather than 
be left out of it altogether. But certain it is, that each wife 
went as gravely and steadily to work in her vocation as her 
husband did in his: and would have considered it almost im- 
possible for the Firm to maintain a successful and respectable 
existence, without her laudable exertions. 

But now the Bird of Paradise was seen to flutter down the 
middle; and the little bells began to bounce and jingle in 
poussette; and the Doctor’s rosy face spun round and round, 
like an expressive pegtop highly varnished ; and breathless Mr. 
Craggs began to doubt already, whether country dancing had 
been made “ too easy,” like the rest of life ; and Mr. Snitchey, 
with his nimble cuts and capers, footed it for Self and Craggs, 
and half-a-dozen more. 

Now too, the fire took fresh courage, favoured by the lively 
wind the dance awakened, and burnt clear and high. It was 
the Genius of the room, and present everywhere. It shone in 
people’s eyes, it sparkled in the jewels on the snowy necks of 


THE BATTLE OF LIFE 


302 

girls, it twinkled at their ears as if it whispered to them slyly, 
it flashed about their waists, it flickered on the ground and 
made it rosy for their feet, it bloomed upon the ceiling that 
its glow might set off their bright faces, and it kindled up a 
general illumination in Mrs. Craggs’s little belfry. 

Now too, the lively air that fanned it, grew less gentle as the 
music quickened and the dance proceeded with new spirit ; and 
a breeze arose that made the leaves and berries dance upon the 
wall, as they had often done upon the trees; and rustled in 
the room as if an invisible company of fairies, treading in the 
footsteps of the good substantial revellers, were whirling after 
them. Now too, no feature of the Doctor’s face could be dis- 
tinguished as he spun and spun; and now there seemed a 
dozen Birds of Paradise in fitful flight ! and now there were a 
thousand little bells at work; and now a fleet of flying skirts 
was ruffled by a little tempest ; when the music gave in, and the 
dance was over. 

Hot and breathless as the Doctor was, it only made him 
more impatient for Alfred’s coming. 

‘‘Anything been seen, Britain? Anything been heard?” 

“ Too dark to see far. Sir. Too much noise inside the house 
to hear.” 

“ That’s right ! The gayer welcome for him. How goes 
the time ? ” 

“ Just twelve. Sir. He can’t be long. Sir.” 

“ Stir up the fire, and throw another log upon it,” said the 
Doctor. “ Let him see his welcome blazing out upon the 
night — good boy ! — as he comes along ! ” 

He saw it — Yes! From the chaise he caught the light, as 
he turned the corner by the old church. He knew the room 
from which it shone. He saw the wintry branches of the old 
trees between the light and him. He knew that one of those 
trees rustled musically in the summer time at the window of 
Marion’s chamber. 

The tears were in his eyes. His heart throbbed so vio- 
lently that he could hardly bear his happiness. How often 
he had thought of this time — pictured it under all circum- 
stances — feared that it might never come — ^yearned, and 
wearied for it — far away ! 

Again the light! Distinct and ruddy; kindled, he knew, to 


THE BATTLE OF LIFE 303 

give him 'welcome, and to speed him home. He beckoned with 
his hand, and waved his hat, and cheered out, loud, as if the 
light were they, and they could see and hear him, as he dashed 
towards them through the mud and mire, triumphantly. 

Stop! He knew the Doctor, and understood what he had 
done. He would not let it be a surprise to them. But he 
could make it one, yet, by going forward on foot. If the 
orchard gate were open, he could enter there ; if not, the wall 
was easily climbed, as he knew of old ; and he would be among 
them in an instant. 

He dismounted from the chaise, and telling the driver — 
even that was not easy in his agitation — ^to remain behind for 
a few minutes, and then to follow slowly, ran on with exceed- 
ing swiftness, tried the gate, scaled the wall, jumped down on 
the other side, and stood panting in the old orchard. 

There was a frosty rime upon the trees, which, in the faint 
light of the clouded moon, hung upon the smaller branches 
like dead garlands. Withered leaves crackled and snapped 
beneath his feet, as he crept softly on towards the house. The 
desolation of a winter night sat brooding on the earth, and in 
the sky. But the red light came cheerily towards him from 
the windows : figures passed and repassed there : and the hum 
and murmur of voices greeted his ear sweetly. 

Listening for hers: attempting, as he crept on, to detach it 
from the rest, and half-believing that he heard it: he had 
nearly reached the door, when it was abruptly opened, and a 
figure coming out encountered his. It instantly recoiled with 
a half-suppressed cry. 

“ Clemency,” he said, ‘‘ don’t you know me ? ” 

“ Don’t come in,” she answered, pushing him back. “ Go 
away. Don’t ask me why. Don’t come in.” 

“ What is the matter? ” he exclaimed. 

“ I don’t know. I — I am afraid to think. Go back. 
Hark!” 

There was a sudden tumult in the house. She put her 
hands upon her ears. A wild scream, such as no hands could 
shut out, was heard; and Grace — distraction in her looks and 
manner — rushed out at the door. 

Grace ! ” He caught her in his arms. “ What is it ! Is 
she dead ! ” 


THE BATTLE OF LIFE 


304 

She disengaged herself, as if to recognise his face, and fell 
down at his feet. 

A crowd of figures came about them from the house. 
Among them was her father, with a paper in his hand. 

What is it ! ” cried Alfred, grasping his hair with his 
hands, and looking in an agony from face to face, as he bent 
upon his knee beside the insensible girl. “ Will no one look 
at me? Will no one speak to me? Does no one know me? 
Is there no voice among you all, to tell me what it is ! ” 

There was a murmur among them. “ She is gone.’^ 

“ Gone ! ” he echoed. 

“ Fled, my dear Alfred ! ” said the Doctor, in a broken voice, 
and with his hands before his face. “ Gone from her home 
and us. To-night! She writes that she has made her in- 
nocent and blameless choice — entreats that we will forgive her 
— prays that we will not forget her — and is gone.” 

“ With whom ? Where ? ” 

He started up, as if to follow in pursuit, but when they 
gave way to let him pass, looked wildly round upon them, 
staggered back, and sank down in his former attitude, clasp- 
ing one of Grace’s cold hands in his own. 

There was a hurried running to and fro, confusion, noise, 
disorder, and no purpose. Some proceeded to disperse them- 
selves about the roads, and some took horse, and some got 
lights, and some conversed together, urging that there was 
no trace or track to follow. Some approached him kindly, 
with the view of offering consolation; some admonished him 
that Grace must be removed into the house, and that he pre- 
vented it. He never heard them, and he never moved. 

The snow fell fast and thick. He looked up for a moment 
in the air, and thought that those white ashes strewn upon 
his hopes and misery, were suited to them well. He looked 
round on the whitening ground, and thought how Marion’s 
footprints would be hushed and covered up, as soon as made, 
and even that remembrance of her blotted out. But he never 
felt the weather and he never stirred. 


THE BATTLE OF LIFE 


305^ 


PART THE THIRD 


HE world had grown six years older since that night of 



X the return. It was a warm autumn afternoon, and there 
had been heavy rain. The sun burst suddenly from among 
the clouds : and the old battle-ground, sparkling brilliantly and 
cheerfully at sight of it in one green place, flashed a respon- 
sive welcome there, which spread along the country side as if 
a joyful beacon had been lighted up, and answered from a 
thousand stations. 

How beautiful the landscape kindling in the light, and that 
luxuriant influence passing on like a celestial presence, 
brightening everything! The wood, a sombre mass before, 
revealed its varied tints of yellow, green, brown, red; its dif- 
ferent forms of trees, with raindrops glittering on their leaves 
and twinkling as they fell. The verdant meadow-land, bright 
and glowing, seemed as if it had been blind a minute since, and 
now had found a sense of sight wherewith to look up at 
the shining sky. Corn-fields, hedge-rows, fences, homesteads, 
the clustered roofs, the steeple of the church, the stream, the 
watermill, all sprang out of the gloomy darkness, smiling. 
Birds sang sweetly, flowers raised their drooping heads, fresh 
scents arose from the invigorated ground; the blue expanse 
above, extended and diffused itself; already the sun’s slanting 
rays pierced mortally the sullen bank of cloud that lingered 
in its flight; and a rainbow, spirit of all the colours that 
adorned the earth and sky, spanned the whole arch with its 
triumphant glory. 

At such a time, one little roadside Inn, snugly sheltered 
behind a great elm-tree with a rare seat for idlers encircling 
its capacious bole, addressed a cheerful front towards the 
traveller, as a house of entertainment ought, and tempted him 
with many mute but significant assurances of a comfortable 
welcome. The ruddy signboard perched up in the tree, with 
its golden letters winking in the sun, ogled the passer-by from 
among the green leaves, like a jolly face, and promised good 
cheer. The horse-trough, full of clear fresh water, and the 
ground below it sprinkled with droppings of fragrant hay, 


THE BATTLE OF LIFE 


306 

made every horse that passed prick up his ears. The crimson 
curtains in the lower rooms, and the pure white hangings in 
the little bedchambers above, beckoned, Come in! with every 
breath of air. Upon the bright green shutters, there were 
golden legends about beer and ale, and neat wines, and good 
beds ; and an affecting picture of a brown jug frothing over at 
the top. Upon the window-sills were flowering plants in bright 
red pots, which made a lively show against the white front 
of the house; and in the darkness of the doorway there were 
streaks of light, which glanced off from the surfaces of bottles 
and tankards. 

On the door-step, appeared a proper figure of a landlord, 
too ; for though he was a short man, he was round and broad, 
and stood with his hands in his pockets, and his legs just wide 
enough apart to express a mind at rest upon the subject of 
the cellar, and an easy confidence — too calm and virtuous to 
become a swagger — in the general resources of the Inn. The 
superabundant moisture, trickling from everything after the 
late rain, set him off well. Nothing near him was thirsty. 
Certain top-heavy dahlias, looking over the palings of his 
neat well-ordered garden, had swilled as much as they could 
carry — perhaps a trifle more — and may have been the worse 
for liquor; but the sweet-briar, roses, wall-flowers, the plants 
at the windows, and the leaves on the old tree, were in the 
beaming state of moderate company that had taken no more 
than was wholesome for them, and had served to develop 
their best qualities. Sprinkling dewy drops about them on 
the ground, they seemed profuse of innocent and sparkling 
mirth, that did good where it lighted, softening neglected 
corners which the steady rain could seldom reach, and hurting 
nothing. 

This village Inn had assumed, on being established, an 
uncommon sign. It was called The Nutmeg Grater. And 
underneath that household word, was inscribed, up in the tree, 
on the same flaming board, and in the like golden characters. 
By Benjamin Britain. At a second glance, and on a more 
minute examination of his face, you might have known that it 
was no other than Benjamin Britain himself who stood in the 
doorway — reasonably changed by time, but for the better; a 
very comfortable host indeed. 


THE BATTLE OF LIFE 307 

Mrs. B.,’’ said Mr. Britain, looking down the road, “ is 
rather late. It’s tea-time.” 

As there was no Mrs. Britain coming, he strolled leisurely 
out into the road and looked up at the house, very much to 
his satisfaction. It’s just the sort of house,” said Benjamin, 

I should wish to stop at, if I didn’t keep it.” 

Then he strolled towards the garden paling, and took a 
look at the dahlias. They looked over at him, with a help- 
less, drowsy hanging of their heads: which bobbed again, 
as the heavy drops of wet dripped off them. 

“ You must be looked after,” said Benjamin. Memoran- 
dum, not to forget to tell her so. She’s a long time com- 
ing ! ” 

Mr. Britain’s better half seemed to be by so very much 
his better half, that his own moiety of himself was utterly 
cast away and helpless without her. 

“ She hadn’t much to do, I think,” said Ben. ‘‘ There 
were a few little matters of business after market, but not 
many. Oh ! here we are at last ! ” 

A chaise-cart, driven by a boy, came clattering along the 
road: and seated in it, in a chair, with a large well-saturated 
umbrella spread out to dry behind her, was the plump figure 
of a matronly woman, with her bare arms folded across a 
basket which she carried on her knee, several other baskets 
and parcels lying crowded around her, and a certain bright 
good-nature in her face and contented awkwardness in her 
manner, as she jogged to and fro with the motion of her 
carriage, which smacked of old times, even in the distance. 
Upon her nearer approach, this relish of bygone days was 
not diminished; and when the cart stopped at The Nutmeg 
Grater door, a pair of shoes, alighting from it, slipped nimbly 
through Mr. Britain’s open arms, and came down with a 
substantial weight upon the pathway, which shoes could 
hardly have belonged to any one but Clemency Newcome. 

In fact they did belong to her, and she stood in them, and 
a rosy comfortable-looking soul she was: with as much soap 
on her glossy face as in times of yore, but with whole elbows 
now, that had grown quite dimpled in her improved condition. 

You’re late, Clemmy ! ” said Mr. Britain. 

‘‘ Why, you see, Ben, I’ve had a deal to do ! ” she replied, 


THE BATTLE OF LIFE 


308 

looking busily after the safe removal into the house of all 
the packages and baskets; eight, nine, ten, — where’s eleven? 
Oh! my basket’s eleven! It’s all right. Put the horse up, 
Harry, and if he coughs again give him a warm mash to- 
night. Eight, nine, ten. Why, where’s eleven ? Oh, I forgot, 
it’s all right. How’s the children, Ben ? ” 

‘‘ Hearty, Clemmy, hearty.” 

“ Bless their precious faces ! ” said Mrs. Britain, unbon- 
neting her own round countenance (for she and her husband 
were by this time in the bar), and smoothing her hair with 
her open hands. ‘‘ Give us a kiss, old man.” 

Mr. Britain promptly complied. 

“ I think,” said Mrs. Britain, applying herself to her pockets 
and drawing forth an immense bulk of thin books and crum- 
pled papers, a very kennel of dogs’-ears : “ I’ve done 

everything. Bills all settled — turnips sold — ^brewer’s account 
looked into and paid — ’bacco pipes ordered — seventeen pound 
four, paid into the Bank — Doctor Heathfield’s charge for lit- 
tle Clem — you’ll guess what that is — Doctor Heathfield won’t 
take nothing again, Ben.” 

“ I thought he wouldn’t,” returned Britain. 

“ No. He says whatever family you was to have, Ben, 
he’d never put you to the cost of a halfpenny. Not if you 
was to have twenty.” 

Mr. Britain’s face assumed a serious expression, and he 
looked hard at the wall. 

“ An’t it kind of him ? ” said Clemency. 

“ Very,” returned Mr. Britain. It’s the sort of kindness 
that I wouldn’t presume upon, on any account.” 

“ No,” retorted Clemency. Of course not. Then there’s 
the pony — he fetched eight pound two; and that an’t bad, is 
it?” 

“ It’s very good,” said Ben. 

‘‘ I’m glad you’re pleased 1 ” exclaimed his wife. “ I 
thought you would be: and I think that’s all, and so no more 
at present from yours and cetrer, C. Britain. Ha, ha, ha! 
There! Take all the papers, and lock ’em up. Oh! Wait 
a minute. Here’s a printed bill to stick on the wall. Wet 
from the printer’s. How nice it smells ! ” 

“ What’s this ? ” said Ben, looking over the document. 


THE BATTLE OF LIFE 309 

I don’t know,” replied his wife. I haven’t read a word 
of it.” 

“ ' To be sold by Auction,’ ” read the host of The Nutmeg 
Grater, “ ‘ unless previously disposed of by private contract.’ ” 

“ They always put that,” said Clemency. 

Yes, but they don’t always put this,” he returned. Look 
here, ' Mansion,’ &c. — ‘ offices,’ &c., ‘ shrubberies,’ &c., ' ring 
fence,’ &c. ‘ Messrs. Snitchey and Craggs,’ &c., ‘ ornamental 

portion of the unencumbered freehold property of Michael 
Warden, Esquire, intending to continue to reside abroad ’ ! ” 

“ Intending to continue to reside abroad ! ” repeated Clem- 
ency. 

“ Here it is,” said Britain. ‘‘ Look ! ” 

“ And it was only this, very day that I heard it whispered 
at the old house, that better and plainer news had been half 
promised of her, soon ! ” said Clemency, shaking her head 
sorrowfully, and patting her elbows as if the recollection of 
old times unconsciously awakened her old habits. “ Dear, 
dear, dear! There’ll be heavy hearts, Ben, yonder.” 

Mr. Britain heaved a sigh, and shook his head, and said 
he couldn’t make it out: he had left off trying long ago. 
With that remark, he applied himself to putting up the bill 
just inside the bar window: and Clemency, after meditating 
in silence for a few moments, roused herself, cleared her 
thoughtful brow, and bustled off to look after the children. 

Though the host of The Nutmeg Grater had a lively regard 
for his good-wife, it was of the old patronising kind ; and she 
amused him mightily. Nothing would have astonished him 
so much, as to have known for certain from any third party, 
that it was she who managed the whole house, and made him, 
by her plain straightforward thrift, good-humour, honesty, 
and industry, a thriving man. So easy it is, in any degree 
of life (as the world very often finds it), to take those cheer- 
ful natures that never assert their merit, at their own modest 
valuation ; and to conceive a flippant liking of people for their 
outward oddities and eccentricities, whose innate worth, if 
we would look so far, might make us blush in the com- 
parison ! 

It was comfortable to Mr. Britain, to think of his own 
condescension in having married Clemency. She was a per- 


THE BATTLE OF LIFE 


310 

petual testimony to him of the goodness of his heart, and the 
kindness of his disposition; and he felt that her being an 
excellent wife was an illustration of the old precept that virtue 
is its own reward. 

He had finished wafering up the bill, and had locked the 
vouchers for her day’s proceedings in the cupboard — chuckling 
all the time, over her capacity for business — when, returning 
with the news that the two Master Britains were playing in 
the coach-house, under the superintendence of one Betsey, 
and that little Clem was sleeping “ like a picture,” she sat 
down at tea, which had awaited her arrival on a little table. 
It was a very neat little bar, with the usual display of bottles 
and glasses; a sedate clock, right to the minute (it was half- 
past five) ; everything in its place, and everything furbished 
and polished up to the very utmost. 

It’s the first time I’ve sat down quietly to-day, I declare,” 
said Mrs. Britain, taking a long breath, as if she had sat 
down for the night; but getting up again immediately to 
hand her husband his tea, and cut him his bread-and-butter; 
“ how that bill does set me thinking of old times ! ” 

'' Ah ! ” said Mr, Britain, handling his saucer like an oyster, 
and disposing of its contents on the same principle. 

“ That same Mr. Michael Warden,” said Clemency, shak- 
ing her head at the notice of sale, “ lost me my old place.” 

And got you your husband,” said Mr. Britain. 

“ Well ! So he did,” retorted Clemency, “ and many thanks 
to him.” 

Man’s the creature of habit,” said Mr. Britain, surveying 
her, over his saucer. ‘‘ I had somehow got used to you, Clem ; 
and I found I shouldn’t be able to get on without you. So we 
went and got made man and wife. Ha, ha! We! Who’d 
have thought it ! ” 

‘‘ Who indeed ! ” cried Clemency. “ It was very good of 
you, Ben.” 

‘‘ No, no, no,” replied Mr. Britain, with an air of self- 
denial. Nothing worth mentioning.” 

“ Oh, yes it was, Ben,” said his wife, with great simplicity ; 
“ I’m sure I think so ; and am very much obliged to you. 
Ah ! ” looking again at the bill ; “ when she was known to 
be gone, and out of reach, dear girl, I couldn’t help telling 


THE BATTLE OF LIFE 311 

— for her sake quite as much as theirs — what I knew, could 
I?” 

“ You told it, anyhow,” observed her husband. 

“And Doctor Jeddler,” pursued Clemency, putting down 
her tea-cup, and looking thoughtfully at the bill, “ in his 
grief and passion turned me out of house and home ! I 
never have been so glad of anything in all my life, as that 
I didn’t say an angry word to him, and hadn’t an angry feel- 
ing towards him, even then; for he repented that truly, after- 
wards. How often he has sat in this room, and told me over 
and over again he was sorry for it! — ^the last time, only 
yesterday, when you were out. How often he has sat in this 
room, and talked to me, hour after hour, about one thing 
and another, in which he made believe to be interested I — ^but 
only for the sake of the days that are gone away, and be- 
cause he knows she used to like me, Ben 1 ” 

“ Why, how did you ever come to catch a glimpse of that, 
Clem ? ” asked her husband ; astonished that she should have 
a distinct perception of a truth which had only dimly sug- 
gested itself to his inquiring mind. 

“ I don’t know. I’m sure,” said Clemency, blowing her tea, 
to cool it. “ Bless you, I couldn’t tell you if you was to offer 
me a reward of a hundred pound.” 

He might have pursued this metaphysical subject but for 
her catching a glimpse of a substantial fact behind him, in 
the shape of a gentleman attired in mourning, and cloaked 
and booted like a rider on horseback, who stood at the bar- 
door. He seemed attentive to their conversation, and not 
at all impatient to interrupt it. 

Clemency hastily rose at this sight. Mr. Britain also rose 
and saluted the guest. “ Will you please to walk upstairs. 
Sir? There’s a very nice room upstairs. Sir.” 

“ Thank you,” said the stranger, looking earnestly at Mr. 
Britain’s wife. “ May I come in here ? ” 

“ Oh, surely, if you like. Sir,” returned Clemency, admit- 
ting him. “What would you please to want. Sir?” 

The bill had caught his eye, and he was reading it. 

“ Excellent property that. Sir,” observed Mr. Britain. 

He made no answer; but turning round, when he had fin- 
ished reading, looked at Clemency with the same observant 


THE BATTLE OF LIFE 


312 

curiosity as before. *^You were asking me/’ he said, still 
looking at her — 

“ What you would please to take, Sir,” answered Clem- 
ency, stealing a glance at him in return. 

“If you will let me have a draught of ale,” he said, mov- 
ing to a table by the window, “ and will let me have it here, 
without being any interruption to your meal, I shall be much 
obliged to you.” 

He sat down as he spoke, without any further parley, and 
looked out at the prospect. He was an easy, well-knit figure 
of a man in the prime of life. His face, much browned by 
the sun, was shaded by a quantity of dark hair ; and he wore 
a moustache. His beer being set before him, he filled out 
a glass, and drank, good-humouredly, to the house; adding, 
as he put the tumbler down again: 

“ It’s a new house, is it not ? ” 

“ Not particularly new. Sir,” replied Mr. Britain. 

“ Between five and six years old,” said Clemency : speak- 
ing very distinctly. 

“ I think I heard you mention Doctor Jeddler’s name, as 
I came in,” inquired the stranger. “That bill reminds me 
of him; for I happen to know something of that story, by 
hearsay, and through certain connections of mine. — Is the 
old man living?” 

“ Yes, he’s living. Sir,” said Clemency. 

“ Much changed ? ” 

“Since when. Sir?” returned Clemency, with remarkable 
emphasis and expression. 

“ Since his daughter — went away.” 

“ Yes ! he’s greatly changed since then,” said Clemency. 
“ He’s grey and old, and hasn’t the same way with him at 
all; but I think he’s happy now. He has taken on with his 
sister since then, and goes to see her very often. That did 
him good directly. At first, he was sadly broken down; and 
it was enough to make one’s heart bleed, to see him wander- 
ing about, railing at the world; but a great change for the 
better came over him after a year or two, and then he began 
to like to talk about his lost daughter, and to praise her, ay 
and the world too ! and was never tired of saying, with the 
tears in his poor eyes, how beautiful and good she was. He 


THE BATTLE OF LIFE 


313 

had forgiven her then. That was about the same time as Miss 
Grace’s marriage. Britain, you remember?” 

Mr. Britain remembered very well. 

“ The sister is married then,” returned the stranger. He 
paused for some time before he asked, ‘‘To whom?” 

Clemency narrowly escaped oversetting the tea-board, in 
her emotion at this question. 

“ Did you never hear ? ” she said. 

“ I should like to hear,” he replied, as he filled his glass 
again, and raised it to his lips. 

“ Ah ! It would be a long story, if it was properly told,” 
said Clemency, resting her chin on the palm of her left 
hand, and supporting that elbow on her right hand, as she 
shook her head, and looked back through the intervening 
years, as if she were looking at a fire. “ It would be a long 
story, I am sure.” 

“ But told as a short one,” suggested the stranger. 

“ Told as a short one,” repeated Clemency in the same 
thoughtful tone, and without any apparent reference to him, 
or consciousness of having auditors, “ what would there be 
to tell? That they grieved together, and remembered her 
together, like a person dead ; that they were so tender of her, 
never would reproach her, called her back to one another as 
she used to be, and found excuses for her? Every one knows 
that. I’m sure / do. No one better,” added Clemency, wip- 
ing her eyes with her hand. 

“ And so,” suggested the stranger. 

“And so,” said Clemency, taking him up mechanically, 
and without any change in her attitude or manner, “ they 
at last were married. They were married on her birthday 
— it comes round again to-morrow — very quiet, very humble 
like, but very happy. Mr. Alfred said, one night when they 
were walking in the orchard, ‘ Grace, shall our wedding-day be 
Marion’s birthday?’ And it was.” 

“ And they have lived happily together ? ” said the stranger. 

“ Ay,” said Clemency. “No two people ever more so. 
They have had no sorrow but this.” 

She raised her head as with a sudden attention to the 
circumstances under which she was recalling these events, 
and looked quickly at the stranger. Seeing that his face 


THE BATTLE OF LIFE 


314 

was turned toward the window, and that he seemed intent 
upon the prospect, she made some eager signs to her hus- 
band, and pointed to the bill, and moved her mouth as if 
she were repeating with great energy, one word or phrase 
to him over and over again. As she uttered no sound, and 
as her dumb motions like most of her gestures were of a 
very extraordinary kind, this unintelligible conduct reduced 
Mr. Britain to the confines of despair. He stared at the 
table, at the stranger, at the spoons, at his wife — followed 
her pantomime with looks of deep amazement and perplexity 
— asked in the same language, was it property in danger, was 
it he in danger, was it she — answered her signals with other 
signals expressive of the deepest distress and confusion — fol- 
lowed the motions of her lips — guessed half aloud “ milk and 
water,” monthly warning,” “ mice and walnuts ” — and 
couldn’t approach her meaning. 

Clemency gave it up at last, as a hopeless attempt; and 
moving her chair by very slow degrees a little nearer to the 
stranger, sat with her eyes apparently cast down but glancing 
sharply at him now and then, waiting until he should ask 
some other question. She had not to wait long; for he said, 
presently : 

“ And what is the after history of the young lady who went 
away ? They know it, I suppose ? ” 

Clemency shook her head. “ I’ve heard,” she said, that 
Doctor Jeddler is thought to know more of it than he tells. 
Miss Grace has had letters from her sister, saying that she 
was well and happy, and made much happier by her being 
married to Mr. Alfred: and has written letters back. But 
there’s a mystery about her life and fortunes, altogether, 
which nothing has cleared up to this hour, and which — ” 

She faltered here, and stopped. 

And which — ” repeated the stranger. 

“ Which only one other person, I believe, could explain,” 
said Clemency, drawing her breath quickly. 

“ Who may that be ? ” asked the stranger. 

“Mr. Michael Warden!” answered Clemency, almost in a 
shriek; at once conveying to her husband what she would 
have had him understand before, and letting Michael Warden 
know that he was recognised, 


THE BATTLE OF LIFE 


315 

‘‘You remember me, Sir?’’ said Clemency, trembling with 
emotion; “ I saw just now you did! You remember me, that 
night in the garden. I was with her ! ” 

“Yes. You were,” he said. 

“Yes, Sir,” returned Clemency. “Yes, to be sure. This 
is my husband, if you please. Ben, my dear Ben, run to 
Miss Grace — run to Mr. Alfred — run somewhere, Ben! 
Bring somebody here, directly ! ” 

“ Stay ! ” said Michael Warden, quietly interposing him- 
self between the door and Britain. “What would you do?” 

“ Let them know that you are here. Sir,” answered Clem- 
ency, clapping her hands in sheer agitation. “ Let them 
know that they may hear of her, from your own lips ; let them 
know that she is not quite lost to them, but that she will 
come home again yet, to bless her father and her loving sister 
— even her old servant, even me,” she struck herself upon the 
breast with both hands, “ with a sight of her sweet face. 
Run, Ben, run ! ” And still she pressed him on towards the 
door, and still Mr. Warden stood before it, with his hand 
stretched out, not angrily, but sorrowfully. 

“ Or perhaps,” said Clemency, running past her husband, 
and catching in her emotion at Mr. Warden’s cloak, “ per- 
haps she’s here now; perhaps she’s close by. I think from 
your manner she is. Let me see her. Sir, if you please. I 
waited on her when she was a little child. I saw her grow 
to be the pride of all this place. I knew her when she was 
Mr. Alfred’s promised wife. I tried to warn her when you 
tempted her away. I know what her old home was when 
she was like the soul of it, and how it changed when she 
was gone and lost. Let me speak to her, if you please ! ” 

He gazed at her with compassion, not unmixed with won- 
der : but he made no gesture of assent. 

“ I don’t think she can know,” pursued Clemency, “ how 
truly they forgive her; how they love her; what joy it would 
be to them, to see her once more. She may be timorous of 
going home. Perhaps if she sees me, it may give her new’' 
heart. Only tell me truly, Mr. Warden, is she with you?” 

“ She is not,” he answered, shaking his head. 

This answer, and his manner, and his black dress, and 
his coming back so quietly, and his announced intention of 


THE BATTLE OF LIFE 


316 

continuing to live abroad, explained it all. Marion was dead. 

He didn’t contradict her; yes, she was dead! Clemency 
sat down, hid her face upon the table, and cried. 

At that moment, a grey-headed old gentleman came run- 
ning in quite out of breath, and panting so much that his 
voice was scarcely to be recognised as the voice of Mr. 
Snitchey. 

“ Good Heaven, Mr. Warden ! ” said the lawyer, taking him 
aside, “ what wind has blown — ” He was so blown himself, 
that he couldn’t get on any further until after a pause, when 
he added, feebly, “you here?” 

“ An ill wind, I am afraid,” he answered. “ If you could 
have heard what has just passed — how I have been besought 
and entreated to perform impossibilities — what confusion and 
affliction I carry with me ! ” 

“ I can guess it all. But why did you ever come here, my 
good Sir?” retorted Snitchey. 

“ Come! How should I know who kept the house? When 
I sent my servant on to you, I strolled in here because the 
place was new to me; and I had a natural curiosity in every- 
thing new and old, in these old scenes ; and it was outside the 
town. I wanted to communicate with you first, before ap- 
pearing there. I wanted to know what people would say 
to me. I see by your manner that you can tell me. If it were 
not for your confounded caution, I should have been pos- 
sessed of everything long ago.” 

“ Our caution ! ” returned the lawyer. “ Speaking for Self 
and Craggs — deceased,” here Mr. Snitchey, glancing at his 
hat-band, shook his head, “ how can you reasonably blame us, 
Mr. Warden? It was understood between us that the sub- 
ject was never to be renewed, and that it wasn’t a subject on 
which grave and sober men like us (I made a note of your 
observations at the time) could interfere. Our caution too! 
When Mr. Craggs, Sir, went down to his respected grave in 
the full belief — ” 

“ I had given a solemn promise of silence until I should 
return, whenever that might be,” interrupted Mr. Warden; 
“and I have kept it.” 

“Well, Sir, and I repeat it,” returned Mr. Snitchey, “we 
were bound to silence too. We were bound to silence in our 


THE BATTLE OF LIFE 


317 

duty towards ourselves, and in our duty towards a variety 
of clients, you among them, who were as close as wax. It 
was not our place to make inquiries of you on such a delicate 
subject. I had my suspicions. Sir; but it is not six months 
since I have known the truth, and been assured that you lost 
her.” 

“ By whom ? ” inquired his client. 

‘‘ By Doctor Jeddler himself, Sir, who at last reposed that 
confidence in me voluntarily. He, and only he, has known the 
whole truth, years and years.” 

‘‘And you know it?” said his client. 

“ I do. Sir ! ” replied Snitchey ; “ and I have also reason 
to know that it will be broken to her sister to-morrow even- 
ing. They have given her that promise. In the meantime, 
perhaps you’ll give me the honour of your company at my 
house; being unexpected at your own. But, not to run the 
chance of any more such difficulties as you have had here, 
in case you should be recognised — though you’re a good deal 
changed; I think I might have passed you myself, Mr. Warden 
— we had better dine here, and walk on in the evening. It’s 
a very good place to dine at, Mr. Warden : your own prop- 
^erty, by the bye. Self and Craggs (deceased) took a chop 
here sometimes, and had it very comfortably served. Mr. 
Craggs, Sir,” said Snitchey, shutting his eyes tight for an 
instant, and opening them again, “ was struck off the roll 
of life too soon.” 

“ Heaven forgive me for not condoling with you,” returned 
Michael Warden, passing his hand across his forehead, “ but 
I’m like a man in a dream at present. I seem to want my 
wits. Mr. Craggs — yes — I am very sorry we have lost Mr. 
Craggs.” But he looked at Clemency as he said it, and 
seemed to sympathise with Ben, consoling her. 

“ Mr. Craggs, Sir,” observed Snitchey, “ didn’t find life, 
I regret to say, as easy to have and to hold as his theory made 
it out, or he would have been among us now. It’s a great 
loss to me. He was my right arm, my right leg, my right 
ear, my right eye, was Mr. Craggs. I am paralytic without 
him. He bequeathed his share of the business to Mrs. Craggs, 
her executors, administrators, and assigns. His name re- 
mains in the Firm to this hour. I try, in a childish sort of 


THE BATTLE OF LIFE 


318 

a way, to make believe, sometimes, that he’s alive. You may 
observe that I speak for Self and Craggs — deceased, Sir — de- 
ceased,” said the tender-hearted attorney, waving his pocket- 
handkerchief. 

Michael Warden, who had still been observant of Clem- 
ency, turned to Mr. Snitchey when he ceased to speak, and 
whispered in his ear. 

“ Ah, poor thing ! ” said Snitchey, shaking his head. ‘‘ Yes. 
She was always very faithful to Marion. She was always 
very fond of her. Pretty Marion! Poor Marion! Cheer 
up. Mistress — ^you are married now, you know. Clemency.” 

Clemency only sighed, and shook her head. 

‘‘ Well, well ! Wait till to-morrow,” said the lawyer, 
kindly. 

‘‘ To-morrow can’t bring back the dead to life, Mister,” 
said Clemency, sobbing. 

'' No. It can’t do that, or it would bring back Mr. Craggs, 
deceased,” returned the lawyer. “ But it may bring some 
soothing circumstances; it may bring some comfort. Wait 
till to-morrow ! ” 

So Clemency, shaking his proffered hand, said she would; 
and Britain, who had been terribly cast down at sight of his 
despondent wife (which was like the business hanging its 
head), said that was right; and Mr. Snitchey and Michael 
Warden went upstairs; and there they were soon engaged 
in a conversation so cautiously conducted, that no murmur 
of it was audible above the clatter of plates and dishes, the 
hissing of the frying-pan, the bubbling of saucepans, the low 
monotonous waltzing of the jack — with a dreadful click every 
now and then as if it had met with some mortal accident to 
its head, in a fit of giddiness — and all the other preparations 
in the kitchen for their dinner. 

To-morrow was a bright and peaceful day; and nowhere 
were the autumn tints more beautifully seen, than from the 
quiet orchard of the Doctor’s house. The snows of many 
winter nights had melted from that ground, the withered leaves 
of many summer times had rustled there, since she had fled. 
The honeysuckle porch was green again, the trees cast boun- 
tiful and changing shadows on the grass, the landscape 


THE BATTLE OF LIFE 


319 

was as tranquil and serene as it had ever been ; but where was 
she ! 

Not there. Not there. She would have been a stranger 
sight in her old home now, even than that home had been 
at first, without her. But a lady sat in the familiar place, 
from whose heart she had never passed away; in whose true 
memory she lived, unchanging, youthful, radiant with all 
promise and all hope; in whose affection — and it was a moth- 
er’s now: there was a cherished little daughter playing by 
her side — she had no rival; no successor, upon whose gentle 
lips her name was trembling then. 

The spirit of the lost girl looked out of those eyes. Those 
eyes of Grace, her sister, sitting with her husband in the 
orchard, on their wedding-day, and his and Marion’s birthday. 

He had not become a great man; he had not grown rich; 
he had not forgotten the scenes and friends of his youth: 
he had not fulfilled any one of the Doctor’s old predictions. 
But in his useful, patient, unknown visiting of poor men’s 
homes; and in his watching of sick beds; and in his daily 
knowledge of the gentleness and goodness flowering the bye- 
paths of the world, not to be trodden down beneath the heavy 
foot of poverty, but springing up, elastic, in its track, and 
making its way beautiful; he had better learned and proved, 
in each succeeding year, the truth of his old faith. The man- 
ner of his life, though quiet and remote, had shown him how 
often men still entertained angels, unawares, as in the olden 
time ; and how the most unlikely forms — even some that were 
mean and ugly to the view, and poorly clad — became irradiated 
by the couch of sorrow, want, and pain, and changed to min- 
istering spirits with a glory round their heads. 

He lived to better purpose on the altered battle-ground 
perhaps, than if he had contended restlessly in more ambitious 
lists; and he was happy with his wife, dear Grace. 

And Marion. Had he forgotten her? 

“ The time has flown, dear Grace,” he said, “ since then ; ” 
they had been talking of that night ; and yet it seems a long 
long while ago. We count by changes and events within us. 
Not by years.” 

“ Yet we have years to count by, too, since Marion was 
with us,” returned Grace. Six times, dear husband, count- 


320 THE BATTLE OF LIFE 

ing to-night as one, we have sat here on her birthday, and 
spoken together of that happy return, so eagerly expected 
and so long deferred. Ah, when will it be ! When will it be ! ” 

Her husband attentively observed her, as the tears col- 
lected in her eyes; and drawing nearer, said: 

“ But Marion told you, in that farewell letter which she 
left for you upon your table, love, and which you read so 
often, that years must pass away before it could be. Did 
she not ? ” 

She took a letter from her breast, and kissed it, and said 
‘‘ Yes.’’ 

“ That through those intervening years, however happy she 
might be, she would look forward to the time when you 
would meet again, and all would be made clear: and prayed 
you, trustfully and hopefully to do the same. The letter 
runs so, does it not, my dear ? ” 

Yes, Alfred.” 

“ And every other letter she has written since ? ” 

“ Except the last — some months ago — in which she spoke 
of you, and what you then knew, and what I was to learn 
to-night.” 

He looked towards the sun, then fast declining, and said 
that the appointed time was sunset. 

“ Alfred ! ” said Grace, laying her hand upon his shoulder 
earnestly, “there is something in this letter — this old letter, 
which you say I read so often — that I have never told you. 
But, to-night, dear husband, with that sunset drawing near, 
and all our life seeming to soften and become hushed with the 
departing day, I cannot keep it sejcret.” 

“What is it, love?” 

“When Marion went away, she wrote me, here, that you 
had once left her a sacred trust to me, and that now she 
had left you, Alfred, such a trust in my hands: praying and 
beseeching me, as I loved her, and as I loved you, not to 
reject the affection she believed (she knew, she said) you 
would transfer to me when the new wound was healed, but 
to encourage and return it.” 

“ — And make me a proud, and happy man again, Grace. 
Did she say so ? ” 


THE BATTLE OF LIFE 


321 

She meant, to make myself so blest and honoured in 
your love,'’ was his wife’s answer, as he held her in his 
arms. 

Hear me, my dear ! ” he said. — “ No. Hear me so ! ” — 
and as he spoke, he gently laid the head she had raised, 
again upon his shoulder. “ I know why I have never heard 
this passage in the letter, until now. I know why no trace 
of it ever showed itself in any word or look of yours at that 
time. I know why Grace, although so true a friend to me, 
was hard to win to be my wife. And knowing it, my own ! 
I know the priceless value of the heart I gird within my 
arms, and thank God for the rich possession ! ” 

She wept, but not for sorrow, as he pressed her to his 
heart. After a brief space, he looked down at the child, 
who was sitting at their feet, playing with a little basket 
of flowers, and bade her look how golden and how red the 
sun was. 

“Alfred,” said Grace, raising her head quickly at these 
words, “ the sun is going down. You have not forgotten 
what I am to know before it sets.” 

“ You are to know the truth of Marion’s history, my love,” 
he answered. 

“ All the truth,” she said, imploringly. “ Nothing veiled 
from me, any more. That was the promise. Was it not?” 

“ It was,” he answered. 

“ Before the sun went down on Marion’s birthday. And 
you see it, Alfred? It is sinking fast.” 

He put his arm about her waist; and, looking steadily into 
her eyes, rejoined, 

“ That truth is not reserved so long for me to tell, dear 
Grace. It is to come from other lips.” 

“From other lips!” she faintly echoed. 

“ Yes. I know your constant heart, I know how brave you 
are, I know that to you a word of preparation is enough. 
You have said, truly, that the time is come. It is. Tell me 
that you have present fortitude to bear a trial — a surprise — 
a shock: and the messenger is waiting at the gate.” 

“What messenger?” she said. “And what intelligence 
does he bring ? ” 


322 


THE BATTLE OF LIFE 


“ I am pledged,” he answered her, preserving his steady 
look, ‘‘ to say no more. Do you think you understand me ? ” 
I am afraid to think,” she said. 

There was that emotion in his face, despite its steady 
gaze, which frightened her. Again she hid her own face 
on his shoulder, trembling, and entreated him to pause — a 
moment. 

“ Courage, my wife ! When you have firmness to receive 
the messenger, the messenger is waiting at the gate. The 
sun is setting on Marion’s birthday. Courage, courage, 
Grace ! ” 

She raised her head, and, looking at him, told him she 
was ready. As she stood, and looked upon him going away, 
her face was so like Marion’s as it had been in her later days 
at home, that it was wonderful to see. He took the child 
with him. She called her back — she bore the lost girl’s name 
— and pressed her to her bosom. The little creature, being 
released again, sped after him, and Grace was left alone. 

She knew not what she dreaded, or what hoped; but re- 
mained there, motionless, looking at the porch by which they 
had disappeared. 

Ah! what was that, emerging from its shadow; stand- 
ing on its threshold! That figure, with its white garments 
rustling in the evening air; its head laid down upon her 
father’s breast, and pressed against it to his loving heart ! 
O God! was it a vision that came bursting from the old 
man’s arms, and with a cry, and with a waving of its hands, 
and with a wild precipitation of itself upon her in its bound- 
less love, sank down in her embrace ! 

“Oh, Marion, Marion! Oh, my sister! Oh, my heart’s 
dear love! Oh, joy and happiness unutterable, so to meet 
again ! ” 

It was no dream, no phantom conjured up by hope and 
fear, but Marion, sweet Marion! So beautiful, so happy, 
so unalloyed by care and trial, so elevated and exalted in 
her loveliness, that as the setting sun shone brightly on her 
upturned face, she might have been a spirit visiting the earth 
upon some healing mission. 

Clinging to her sister, who had dropped upon a seat, and 
bent down over her: and smiling through her tears, and 




<( 


‘OH, 


:^[ARIOX, MARION!’”— J-V 



64254 


©CU< 


THE BATTLE OF LIFE 


323 

kneeling, close before her, with both arms twining round 
her, and never turning for an instant from her face: and 
with the glory of the setting sun upon her brow, and with 
the soft tranquillity of evening gathering around them: 
Marion at length broke silence; her voice, so calm, low, clear, 
and pleasant, well-tuned to the time. 

“ When this was my dear home, Grace, as it will be now, 
again — ” 

“ Stay, my sweet love ! A moment ! O Marion, to hear 
you speak again.” 

She could not bear the voice she loved so well, at first. 

‘‘ When this was my dear home, Grace, as it will be now, 
again, I loved him from my soul. I loved him most de- 
votedly. I would have died for him, though I was so young. 
I never slighted his affection in my secret breast, for one 
brief instant. It was far beyond all price to me. Although 
it is so long ago, and past and gone, and everything is wholly 
changed, I could not bear to think that you, who love so well, 
should think I did not truly love him once. I never 
loved him better, Grace, than when he left this very scene 
upon this very day. I never loved him better, dear one, than 
I did that night when / left here.” 

Her sister, bending over her, could only look into her face, 
and hold her fast. 

“ But he had gained, unconsciously,” said Marion, with a 
gentle smile, “ another heart, before I knew that I had one 
to give him. That heart — yours, my sister — was so yielded 
up, in all its other tenderness, to me; was so devoted, and 
so noble; that it plucked its love away, and kept its secret 
from all eyes but mine — Ah! what other eyes were quick- 
ened by such tenderness and gratitude! — and was content 
to sacrifice itself to me. But I knew something of its depths. 
I knew the struggle it had made. I knew its high, inestimable 
worth to him, and his appreciation of it, let him love me as 
he would. I knew the debt I owed it. I had its great 
example every day before me. What you had done for me, 
I knew that I could do, Grace, if I would, for you. I never 
laid my head down on my pillow, but I prayed with tears to 
do it. I never laid my head down on my pillow, but I thought 
of Alfred’s own words, on the day of his departure, and how 


THE BATTLE OF LIFE 


324 

truly he had said (for I knew that, by you) that there were 
victories gained every day, in struggling hearts, to which 
these fields of battle were as nothing. Thinking more and 
more upon the great endurance cheerfully sustained, and never 
known or cared for, that there must be every day and 
hour, in that great strife of which he spoke, my trial seemed 
to grow light and easy: and He who knows our hearts, my 
dearest, at this moment, and who knows there is no drop of 
bitterness or grief — of anything but unmixed happiness — in 
mine, enabled me to make the resolution that I never would 
be Alfred’s wife. That he should be my brother, and your 
husband, if the course I took could bring that happy end to 
pass; but that I never would (Grace, I then loved him dearly, 
dearly!) be his wife!” 

‘‘ O Marion ! O Marion ! ” 

“ I had tried to seem indifferent to him ; ” and she pressed 
her sister’s face against her own ; “ but that was hard, and 
you were always his true advocate. I had tried to tell you 
of my resolution, but you would never hear me; you would 
liever understand me. The time was drawing near for his 
return. I felt that I must act, before the daily intercourse be- 
tween us was renewed. I knew that one great pang, under- 
gone at that time, would save a lengthened agony to all of 
us. I knew that if I went away then, that end must follow 
which has followed, and which has made us both so happy, 
Grace! I wrote to good Aunt Martha, for a refuge in her 
house : I did not then tell her all, but something of my story, 
and she freely promised it. While I was contesting that 
step with myself, and with my love of you, and home, Mr. 
Warden, brought here by an accident, became, for some time, 
our companion.” 

‘‘ I have sometimes feared of late years, that this might 
have been,” exclaimed her sister, and her countenance was 
ashy-pale. You never loved him — and you married him 
in your self-sacrifice to me ! ” 

“ He was then,” said Marion, drawing her sister closer 
to her, “on the eve of going secretly away for a long time. 
He wrote to me, after leaving here ; told me what his con- 
dition and prospects really were; and offered me his hand. 
He told me he had seen I was not happy in the prospect of 


THE BATTLE OF LIFE 325 

Alfred’s return. I believe he thought my heart had no 
part in that contract; perhaps thought I might have loved 
him once, and did not then; perhaps thought that when I 
tried to seem indifferent, I tried to hide indifference — I can- 
not tell. But I wished that you should feel me wholly lost 
to Alfred — hopeless to him — dead. Do you understand me, 
love?” 

Her sister looked into her face, attentively. She seemed 
in doubt. 

“ I saw Mr. Warden, and confided in his honour ; charged 
him with my secret, on the eve of his and my departure. 
He kept it. Do you understand me, dear ? ” 

Grace looked confusedly upon her. She scarcely seemed 
to hear. 

‘‘ My love, my sister ! ” said Marion, recall your thoughts 
a moment: listen to me. Do not look so strangely on me. 
There are countries, dearest, where those who would abjure 
a misplaced passion, or would strive against some cherished 
feeling of their hearts and conquer it, retire into a hopeless 
solitude, and close the world against themselves and worldly 
loves and hopes for ever. When women do so, they assume 
that name which is so dear to you and me, and call each other 
Sisters. But there may be sisters, Grace, who, in the broad 
world out of doors, and underneath its free sky, and in its 
crowded places, and among its busy life, and trying to assist 
and cheer it and to do some good, — learn the same lesson; 
and, with hearts still fresh and young, and open to all hap- 
piness and means of happiness, can say the battle is long past, 
the victory long won. And such a one am I ! You under- 
stand me now ? ” 

Still she looked fixedly upon her, and made no reply. 

‘‘ O Grace, dear Grace,” said Marion, clinging yet more 
tenderly and fondly to that breast from which she had been 
so long exiled, “ if you were not a happy wife and mother — 
if I had no little namesake here — if Alfred, my kind brother, 
were not your own fond husband — from whence could I 
derive the ecstasy I feel to-night! But as I left here, so I 
have returned. My heart has known no other love, my hand 
has never been bestowed apart from it: I am still your maiden 
sister, unmarried, unbetrothed: your own old loving Marion, 


326 THE BATTLE OF LIFE 

in whose affection you exist alone, and have no partner, 
Grace ! ” 

She understood her now. Her face relaxed; sobs came to 
her relief; and falling on her neck, she wept and wept, and 
fondled her as if she were a child again. 

When they were more composed, they found that the Doc- 
tor, and his sister, good Aunt Martha, were standing near at 
hand, with Alfred. 

“ This is a weary day for me,’’ said good Aunt Martha, 
smiling through her tears, as she embraced her nieces ; for 
I lose my dear companion in making you all happy ; and what 
can you give me in return for my Marion ? ” 

“ A converted brother,” said the Doctor. 

“ That’s something, to be sure,” retorted Aunt Martha, in 
such a farce as — ” 

No, pray don’t,” said the Doctor penitently. 

Well, I won’t,” replied Aunt Martha. ‘‘ But I consider 
myself ill-used. I don’t know what’s to become of me with- 
out my Marion, after we have lived together half-a-dozen 
years.” 

‘‘ You must come and live here, I suppose,” replied the 
Doctor. “ We shan’t quarrel now, Martha.” 

“ Or get married, Aunt,” said Alfred. 

“ Indeed,” returned the old lady, “ I think it might be a 
good speculation if I were to set my cap at Michael Warden, 
who, I hear, is come home much the better for his absence, 
in all respects. But as I knew him when he was a boy, and 
I was not a very young woman then, perhaps he might- 
n’t respond. So I’ll make up my mind to go and live 
with Marion, when she marries, and until then (it will not 
be very long, I dare say) to live alone. What do you say, 
Brother ? ” 

I’ve a great mind to say it’s a ridiculous world altogether, 
and there’s nothing serious in it,” observed the poor old 
Doctor. 

You might take twenty affidavits of it if you chose, 
Anthony,” said his sister ; ‘‘ but nobody would believe you 
with such eyes as those.” 

“ It’s a world full of hearts,” said the Doctor ; hugging his 
younger daughter, and bending across her to hug Grace — 


THE BATTLE OF LIFE 


327 

for he couldn’t separate the sisters ; and a serious world, 
with all its folly — even with mine, which was enough to have 
swamped the whole globe; and a world on which the sun 
never rises, but it looks upon a thousand bloodless battles 
that are some set-off against the miseries and wickedness of 
Battle-Fields; and a world we need be careful how we libel. 
Heaven forgive us, for it is a world of sacred mysteries, and 
its Creator only knows what lies beneath the surface of His 
lightest image ! ” 

You would not be the better pleased with my rude pen, 
if it dissected and laid open to your view the transports of 
this family, long severed and now reunited. Therefore, I will 
not follow the poor Doctor through his humbled recollection 
of the sorrow he had had, when Marion was lost to him ; nor 
will I tell how serious he had found that world to be, in 
which some love deep-anchored, is the portion of all human 
creatures; nor how such a trifle as the absence of one little 
unit in the great absurd account, had stricken him to the 
ground. Nor how, in compassion for his distress, his sister 
had, long ago, revealed the truth to him by slow degrees ; and 
brought him to the knowledge of the heart of his self- 
banished daughter, and to that daughter’s side. 

Nor how Alfred Heathfield had been told the truth, too, in 
the course of that then current year; and Marion had seen 
him, and had promised him, as her brother, that on her birth- 
day, in the evening, Grace should know it from her lips at 
last. 

I beg your pardon. Doctor,” said Mr. Snitchey, looking 
into the orchard, “ but have I liberty to come in ? ” 

Without waiting for permission, he came straight to Marion, 
and kissed her hand, quite joyfully. 

If Mr. Craggs had been alive, my dear Miss Marion,” 
said Mr. Snitchey, he would have had great interest in this 
occasion. It might have suggested to him, Mr, Alfred, that 
our life is not too easy, perhaps ; that, taken altogether, it will 
bear any little smoothing we can give it ; but Mr. Craggs was 
a man who could endure to be convinced, Sir. He was always 
open to conviction. If he were open to conviction, now, I — 
this is weakness. Mrs. Snitchey, my dear,” — at his summons 


328 THE BATTLE OF LIFE 

that lady appeared from behind the door, “ you are among old 
friends.” 

Mrs. Snitchey having delivered her congratulations, took 
her husband aside. 

“ One moment, Mr. Snitchey,” said that lady. “ It is not 
in my nature to rake up the ashes of the departed.” 

“ No, my dear,” returned her husband. 

Mr. Graggs is — ” 

‘‘Yes, my dear, he is deceased,” said Mr. Snitchey. 

“ But I ask you if you recollect,” pursued his wife, “ that 
evening of the ball. I only ask you that. If you do; and if 
your memory has not entirely failed you, Mr. Snitchey; and 
if you are not absolutely in your dotage ; I ask you to connect 
this time with that — to remember how I begged and prayed 
you, on my knees — ” 

“ Upon your knees, my dear ? ” said Mr. Snitchey. 

“ Yes,” said Mrs. Snitchey, confidently, “ and you know it 
— to beware of that man — to observe his eye — and now to tell 
me whether I was right, and whether at that moment he knew 
secrets which he didn’t choose to tell.” 

“ Mrs. Snitchey,” returned her husband, in her ear, 
“ Madam. Did you ever observe anything in my eye ? ” 

“ No,” said Mrs. Snitchey, sharply. “ Don’t flatter your- 
self.” 

“ Because, Ma’am, that night,” he continued, twitching her 
by the sleeve, “ it happens that we both knew secrets which 
we didn’t choose to tell, and both knew just the same, profes- 
sionally. And so the less you say about such things the better, 
Mrs. Snitchey; and take this as a warning to have wiser and 
more charitable eyes another time. Miss Marion, I brought 
a friend of yours along with me. Here ! Mistress.” 

Poor Clemency, with her apron to her eyes, came slowly in, 
escorted by her husband; the latter doleful with the presenti- 
ment, that if she abandoned herself to grief. The Nutmeg 
Grater was done for. 

“ Now, Mistress,” said the lawyer, checking Marion as she 
ran towards her, and interposing himself between them, 
“what’s the matter with youf” 

“ The matter ! ” cried poor Clemency. 

When, looking up in wonder, and in indignant remonstrance, 


THE BATTLE OF LIFE 329 

and in the added emotion of a great roar from Mr. Britain, 
and seeing that sweet face so well-remembered close before 
her, she stared, sobbed, laughed, cried, screamed, embraced 
her, held her fast, released her, fell on Mr. Snitchey and em- 
braced him (much to Mrs. Snitchey’s indignation), fell on 
the Doctor and embraced him, fell on Mr. Britain and em- 
braced him, and concluded by embracing herself, throwing her 
apron over her head, and going into hysterics behind it. 

A stranger had come into the orchard, after Mr. Snitchey, 
and had remained apart, near the gate, without being ob- 
served by any of the group ; for they had little spare attention 
to bestow, and that had been monopolised by the ecstasies of 
Clemency. He did not appear to wish to be observed, but 
stood alone, with downcast eyes; and there was an air of 
dejection about him (though he was a gentleman of a gallant 
appearance) which the general happiness rendered more re- 
markable. 

None but the quick eyes of Aunt Martha, however, re- 
marked him at all; but almost as soon as she spied him, she 
was in conversation with him. Presently, going to where 
Marion stood with Grace and her little namesake, she whis- 
pered something in Marion’s ear, at which she started, and 
appeared surprised; but soon recovering from her confusion, 
she timidly approached the stranger, in Aunt Martha’s com- 
pany, and engaged in conversation with him too. 

Mr. Britain,” said the lawyer, putting his hand in his 
pocket, and bringing out a legal-looking document, while this 
was going on, “ I congratulate you. You are now the whole 
and sole proprietor of that freehold tenement, at present oc- 
cupied and held by yourself as a licensed tavern, or house of 
public entertainment, and commonly called or known by the 
sign of The Nutmeg Grater. Your wife lost one house, 
through my client Mr. Michael Warden; and now gains an- 
other. I shall have the pleasure of canvassing you for the 
county, one of these fine mornings.” 

“ Would it make any difference in the vote if the sign was 
altered. Sir?” asked Britain. 

'' Not in the least,” replied the lawyer. 

“ Then,” said Mr. Britain, handing back the conveyance, 
“just clap in the words, ‘and Thimble,’ will you be so good; 


THE BATTLE OF LIFE 


330 

and I’ll have the two mottoes painted up in the parlour, instead 
of my wife’s portrait.” 

“ And let me,” said a voice behind them ; it was the 
stranger’s — Michael Warden’s ; “ let me claim the benefit of 
those inscriptions. Mr. Heathfield and Doctor Jeddler, I 
might have deeply wronged you both. That I did not, is no 
virtue of my own. I will not say that I am six years wiser 
than I was, or better. But I have known, at any rate, that 
term of self-reproach. I can urge no reason why you should 
deal gently with me. I abused the hospitality of this house; 
and learnt my own demerits, with a shame I never have for- 
gotten, yet with some profit too I would fain hope, from one,” 
he glanced at Marion, to whom I made my humble suppli- 
cation for forgiveness, when I knew her merit and my deep 
unworthiness. In a few days I shall quit this place for ever. 
I entreat your pardon. Do as you would be done by! For- 
get, and forgive ! ” 

Time — from whom I had the latter portion of this story, 
and with whom I have the pleasure of a personal acquaintance 
of some five-and-thirty-years’ duration — informed me, leaning 
easily upon his scythe, that Michael Warden never went away 
again, and never sold his house, but opened it afresh, main- 
tained a golden mean of hospitality, and had a wife, the pride 
and honour of that country-side, whose name was Marion. 
But as I have observed that Time confuses facts occasionally, 
I hardly know what weight to give to his authority. 


THE HAUNTED MAN 

AND 

THE GHOST’S BARGAIN 

A FANCY FOR CHRISTMAS-TIME 








THE HAUNTED MAN 

AND 

THE GHOST’S BARGAIN 


CHAPTER I 


THE GIFT BESTOWED 


E verybody said so. 

Far be it from me to assert that what everybody says 
must be true. Everybody is, often, as likely to be wrong 
as right. In the general experience, everybody has been 
wrong so often, and it has taken, in most instances, such a 
weary while to find out how wrong, that the authority is 
proved to be fallible. Everybody may sometimes be right; 
but thafs no rule,” as the ghost of Giles Scroggins says in 
the ballad. 

The dread word. Ghost, recalls me. 

Everybody said he looked like a haunted man. The extent 
of my present claim for everybody is, that they were so far 
right. He did. 

Who could have seen his hollow cheek; his sunken bril- 
liant eye; his black-attired figure, indefinably grim, although 
well-knit and well-proportioned; his grizzled hair hanging, 
like tangled sea-weed, about his face, — as if he had been, 
through his whole life, a lonely mark for the chafing and 
beating of the great deep of humanity, — ^but might have said 
he looked like a haunted man? 

Who could have observed his manner, taciturn, thoughtful, 
gloomy, shadowed by habitual reserve, retiring always and 
jocund never, with a distraught air of reverting to a bygone 
place and time, or of listening to some old echoes in his mind, 
but might have said it was the manner of a haunted man? 

Who could have heard his voice, slow-speaking, deep, and 
grave, with a natural fulness and melody in it which he 

333 


THE HAUNTED MAN 


334 

seemed to set himself against and stop, but might have said 
it was the voice of a haunted man ? 

Who that had seen him in his inner chamber, part library 
and part laboratory, — for he was, as the world knew, far and 
wide, a learned man in chemistry, and a teacher on whose 
lips and hands a crowd of aspiring ears and eyes hung daily, — 
who that had seen him there, upon a winter night, alone, sur- 
rounded by his drugs and instruments and books ; the shadow 
of his shaded lamp a monstrous beetle on the wall, motionless 
among a crowd of spectral shapes raised there by the flicker- 
ing of the fire upon the quaint objects around him; some of 
these phantoms (the reflection of glass vessels that held 
liquids), trembling at heart like things that knew his power 
to uncombine them, and to give back their component parts 
to fire and vapour; — who that had seen him then, his work 
done, and he pondering in his chair before the rusted grate 
and red flame, moving his thin mouth as if in speech, but 
silent as the dead, would not have said that the man seemed 
haunted and the chamber too? 

Who might not, by a very easy flight of fancy, have be- 
lieved that everything about him took this haunted tone, and 
that he lived on haunted ground? 

His dwelling was so solitary and vault-like, — an old, retired 
part of an ancient endowment for students, once a brave 
edifice, planted in an open place, but now the obsolete whim 
of forgotten architects ; smoke-age-and-weather-darkened, 
squeezed on every side by the overgrowing of the great city, 
and choked, like an old well, with stones and bricks; its small 
quadrangles, lying down in very pits formed by the streets 
and buildings, which, in course of time, had been constructed 
above its heavy chimney stacks ; its old trees, insulted by the 
neighbouring smoke, which deigned to droop so low when it 
was very feeble and the weather very moody; its grass-plots, 
struggling with the mildewed earth to be grass, or to. win 
any show of compromise; its silent pavements, unaccustomed 
to the tread of feet, and even to the observation of eyes, ex- 
cept when a stray face looked down from the upper world, 
wondering what nook it was ; its sun-dial in a little bricked-up 
corner, where no sun had straggled for a hundred years, but 
where, in compensation for the sun’s neglect, the snow would 


AND THE GHOST’S BARGAIN 335 

lie for weeks when it lay nowhere else, and the black east 
wind would spin like a huge humming-top, when in all other 
places it was silent and still. 

His dwelling, at its heart and core — within doors — at his 
fireside — was so lowering and old, so crazy, yet so strong, 
with its worm-eaten beams of wood in the ceiling, and its 
sturdy floor shelving downward to the great oak chimney- 
piece; so environed and hemmed in by the pressure of the 
town, yet so remote in fashion, age, and custom; so quiet, yet 
so thundering with echoes when a distant voice was raised or 
a door was shut, — echoes, not confined to the many low pas- 
sages and empty rooms, but rumbling and grumbling till they 
were stifled in the heavy air of the forgotten Crypt where the 
Norman arches were half-buried in the earth. 

You should have seen him in his dwelling about twilight, 
in the dead winter time. 

When the wind was blowing, shrill and shrewd, with the 
going down of the blurred sun. When it was just so dark, 
as that the forms of things were indistinct and big — but not 
wholly lost. When sitters by the fire began to see wild faces 
and figures, mountains and abysses, ambuscades and armies, 
in the coals. When people in the streets bent down their 
heads and ran before the weather. When those who were 
obliged to meet it, were stopped at angry corners, stung by 
wandering snow-flakes alighting on the lashes of their eyes, 
— which fell too sparingly, and were blown away too quickly, 
to leave a trace upon the frozen ground. When windows of 
private houses closed up tight and warm. When lighted gas 
began to burst forth in the busy and the quiet streets, fast 
blackening otherwise. When stray pedestrians, shivering 
along the latter, looked down at the glowing fires in kitchens, 
and sharpened their sharp appetites by sniffing up the fra- 
grance of whole miles of dinners. 

When travellers by land were bitter cold, and looked wearily 
on gloomy landscapes, rustling and shuddering in the blast. 
When mariners at sea, outlying upon icy yards, were tossed 
and swung above the howling ocean dreadfully. When light- 
houses, on rocks and headlands, showed solitary and watchful ; 
and benighted seabirds breasted on against their pon- 
derous lanterns, and fell dead. When little readers of story- 


THE HAUNTED MAN 


336 

books, by the firelight, trembled to think of Cassim Baba cut 
into quarters, hanging in the Robbers’ Cave, or had some small 
misgivings that the fierce little old woman, with the crutch, 
who used to start out of the box in the merchant Abudah’s 
bedroom, might one of these nights, be found upon the stairs, 
in the long, cold, dusky journey up to bed. 

When, in rustic places, the last glimmering of daylight died 
away from the ends of avenues; and the trees, arching over- 
head, were sullen and black. When, in parks and woods, the 
high wet fern and sodden moss, and beds of fallen leaves, and 
trunks of trees, were lost to view, in masses of impenetrable 
shade. When mists arose from dyke, and fen, and river. 
When lights in old halls and in cottage windows, were a 
cheerful sight. When the mill stopped, the wheelwright and 
the blacksmith shut their workshops, the turnpike-gate closed, 
the plough and harrow were left lonely in the fields, the 
labourer and team went home, and the striking of the church 
clock had a deeper sound than at noon, and the churchyard 
wicket would be swung no more that night. 

When twilight everywhere released the shadows, prisoned 
up all day, that now closed in and gathered like mustering 
swarms of ghosts. When they stood lowering, in corners 
of rooms, and frowned out from behind half-opened doors. 
When they had full possession of unoccupied apartments. 
When they danced upon the floors, and walls, and ceilings of 
inhabited chambers, while the fire was low, and withdrew like 
ebbing waters when it sprang into a blaze. When they fan- 
tastically mocked the shapes of household objects, making the 
nurse an ogress, the rocking-horse a monster, the wondering 
child, half-scared and half-amused, a stranger to itself, — the 
very tongs upon the hearth, a straddling giant with his arms 
a-kimbo, evidently smelling the blood of Englishmen, and 
wanting to grind people’s bones to make his bread. 

When these shadows brought into the minds of older people, 
vother thoughts, and showed them different images. When 
they stole from their retreats, in the likenesses of forms and 
faces from the past, from the grave, from the deep, deep 
gulf, where the things that might have been, and never were, 
are always wandering. 

When he sat, as already mentioned, gazing at the fire. 


AND THE GHOST’S BARGAIN 


337 

When, as it rose and fell, the shadows went and came. When 
he took no heed of them, with his bodily eyes; but, let them 
come or let them go, looked fixedly at the fire. You should 
have seen him, then. 

When the sounds that had arisen with the shadows, and 
come out of their lurking-places at the twilight summons, 
seemed to make a deeper stillness all about him. When the 
wind was rumbling in the chimney, and sometimes crooning, 
sometimes howling, in the house. When the old trees out- 
side were so shaken and beaten, that one querulous old rook, 
unable to sleep, protested now and then, in a feeble, dozy, 
high-up ‘‘ Caw ! ” When, at intervals, the window trembled, 
the rusty vane upon the turret-top complained, the clock 
beneath it recorded that another quarter of an hour was gone, 
or the fire collapsed and fell in with a rattle. 

— When a knock came at his door, in short, as he was sitting 
so, and roused him. 

Who’s that ? ” said he. Come in ! ” 

Surely there had been no figure leaning on the back of his 
chair; no face looking over it. It is certain that no gliding 
footstep touched the floor, as he lifted up his head, with a 
start, and spoke. And yet there was no mirror in the room 
on whose surface his own form could have cast its shadow 
for a moment ; and Something had passed darkly and gone ! 

I’m humbly fearful. Sir,” said a fresh-coloured busy man, 
holding the door open with his foot for the admission of him- 
self and a wooden tray he carried, and letting it go again by 
very gentle and careful degrees, when he and the tray had got 
in, lest it should close noisily, that it’s a good bit past the 
time to-night. But Mrs. William has been taken off her legs 
so often — ” 

“By the wind? Ay! I have heard it rising.” 

“ — By the wind, Sir- — that it’s a mercy she got home at all. 
O dear, yes. It was by the wind, Mr. Redlaw. By the 
wind.” 

He had, by this time, put down the tray for dinner, and 
was employed in lighting the lamp, and spreading a cloth on 
the table. From this employment he desisted in a hurry, to 
stir and feed the fire, and then resumed it; the lamp he had 
lighted, and the blaze that rose under his hand, so quickly 


THE HAUNTED MAN 


338 

changing the appearance of the room, that it seemed as if the 
mere coming in of his fresh red face and active manner had 
made the pleasant alteration. 

“ Mrs. William is of course subject at any time, Sir, to be 
taken off her balance by the elements. She is not formed 
superior to that” 

“ No,” returned Mr. Redlaw good-naturedly, though 
abruptly. 

“ No, Sir. Mrs. William may be taken off her balance by 
Earth; as for example, last Sunday week, when sloppy and 
greasy, and she going out to tea with her newest sister-in-law, 
and having a pride in herself, and wishing to appear per- 
fectly spotless though pedestrian. Mrs. William may be taken 
off her balance by Air; as being once overpersuaded by a 
friend to try a swing at Peckham Fair, which acted on her 
constitution instantly like a steam-boat. Mrs. William may be 
taken off her balance by Fire ; as on a false alarm of engines at 
her mother’s, when she went two miles in her nightcap. Mrs. 
William may be taken off her balance by Water ; as at Batter- 
sea, when rowed into the piers by her young nephew, Charley 
Swidger, junior, aged twelve, which had no idea of boats what- 
ever. But these are elements. Mrs. William must be taken 
out of elements for the strength of her character to come into 
play.” 

As he stopped for a reply, the reply was “ Yes,” in the same 
tone as before. 

“ Yes, Sir. O dear, yes ! ” said Mr. Swidger, still proceed- 
ing with his preparations, and checking them off as he made 
them. “ That’s where it is. Sir. That’s what I always say 
myself. Sir. Such a many of us Swidgers ! — Pepper. Why 
there’s my father. Sir, superannuated keeper and custodian 
of this Institution, eigh-ty-seven year old. He’s a Swidger ! — 
Spoon.” 

“ True, William,” was the patient and abstracted answer, 
when he stopped again. 

“ Yes, Sir,” said Mr. Swidger. “ That’s what I always say. 
Sir. You may call him the trunk of the tree! — Bread. Then 
you come to his successor, my unworthy self — Salt — and Mrs. 
William, Swidgers both. — Knife and fork. Then you come to 
all my brothers and their families, Swidgers, man and woman, 


AND THE GHOST’S BARGAIN 339 

boy and girl. Why, what with cousins, uncles, aunts, and 
relationships of this, that, and t’other degree, and what-not- 
degree, and marriages, and lyings-in, the Swidgers — Tumbler 
— might take hold of hands, and make a ring round Eng- 
land ! ” 

Receiving no reply at all here, from the thoughtful man 
whom he addressed, Mr. William approached him nearer, and 
made a feint of accidentally knocking the table with a de- 
canter, to rouse him. The moment he succeeded, he went on, 
as if in great alacrity of acquiescence. 

“Yes, Sir! That’s just what I say myself. Sir. Mrs. 
William and me have often said so. ‘ There’s Swidgers 
enough,’ we say, ‘ without our voluntary contributions,’ — 
Butter. In fact. Sir, my father is a family in himself — 
Castors — ^.to take care of; and it happens all for the best that 
we have no child of our own, though it’s made Mrs. William 
rather quiet-like, too. Quite ready for the fowl and mashed 
potatoes. Sir? Mrs. William said she’d dish in ten minutes 
when I left the Lodge.” 

“ I am quite ready,” said the other, waking as from a 
dream, and walking slowly to and fro. 

“ Mrs. William has been at it again. Sir ! ” said the keeper, 
as he stood warming a plate at the fire, and pleasantly shading 
his face with it. Mr. Redlaw stopped in his walking, and an 
expression of interest appeared in him. 

“ What I always say myself. Sir. She will do it ! There’s 
a motherly feeling in Mrs. William’s breast that must and 
will have went.” 

“ What has she done ? ” 

“ Why, Sir, not satisfied with being a sort of mother to all 
the young gentlemen that come up from a wariety of parts, 
to attend your courses of lectures at this ancient foundation — 
it’s surprising how stone-chaney catches the heat this frosty 
weather, to be sure ! ” Here he turned the plate, and cooled 
his fingers. 

“ Well ? ” said Mr. Redlaw. 

“ That’s just what I say myself. Sir,” returned Mr. Wil- 
liam, speaking over his shoulder, as if in ready and delighted 
assent. “ That’s exactly where it is. Sir I There ain’t one of 
our students but appears to regard Mrs. William in that light. 


THE HAUNTED MAN 


340 

Every day, right through the course, they puts their heads 
into the Lodge, one after another, and have all got something 
to tell her, or something to ask her. ‘ Swidge ^ is the appel- 
lation by which they speak of Mrs. William in general, among 
themselves, Em told; but that’s what I say. Sir. Better be 
called ever so far out of your name, if it’s done in real liking, 
than have it made ever so much of, and not cared about! 
What’s a name for? To know a person by. If Mrs. Wil- 
liam is known by something better than her name — I allude to 
Mrs. William’s qualities and disposition — never mind her 
name, though it is Swidger, by rights. Let ’em call her 
Swidge, Widge, Bridge — Lord! London Bridge, Blackfriars, 
Chelsea, Putney, Waterloo, or Hammersmith Suspension — if 
they like.” 

The close of this triumphant oration brought him and the 
plate to the table, upon which he half laid and half dropped 
it, with a lively sense of its being thoroughly heated, just as 
the subject of his praises entered the room, bearing another 
tray and a lantern, and followed by a venerable old man with 
long grey hair. 

Mrs. William, like Mr. William, was a simple, innocent- 
looking person, in whose smooth cheeks the cheerful red of 
her husband’s official waistcoat was very pleasantly repeated. 
But whereas Mr. William’s light hair stood on end all over 
his head, and seemed to draw his eyes up with it in an excess 
of bustling readiness for anything, the dark brown hair of 
Mrs. William was carefully smoothed down, and waved away 
under a trim tidy cap, in the most exact and quiet manner 
imaginable. Whereas Mr. William’s very trousers hitched 
themselves up at the ankles, as if it were not in their iron- 
grey nature to rest without looking about them, Mrs. Wil- 
liam’s neatly-flowered skirts — red and white, like her own 
pretty face — were as composed and orderly, as if the very 
wind that blew so hard out of doors could not disturb one of 
their folds. Whereas his coat had something of a fly-away 
and half-off appearance about the collar and breast, her little 
bodice was so placid and neat, that there should have been 
protection for her, in it, had she needed any, with the roughest 
people. Who could have had the heart to make so calm a 
bosom swell with grief, or throb 'with fear, or flutter with a 


AND THE GHOST’S BARGAIN 341 

thought of shame! To whom would its repose and peace 
have not appealed against disturbance, like the innocent slum- 
ber of a child ! 

“ Punctual, of course, Milly,” said her husband, relieving 
her of the tray, “ or it wouldn’t be you. Here’s Mrs. William, 
Sir! — He looks lonelier than ever to-night,” whispering to his 
wife, as he was taking the tray, and ghostlier altogether.” 

Without any show of hurry or noise, or any show of her- 
self even, she was so calm and quiet, Milly set the dishes she 
had brought upon the table, — Mr. William, after much clatter- 
ing and running about, having only gained possession of a 
butter-boat of gravy, which he stood ready to serve. 

'' What is that the old man has in his arms ? ” asked Mr. 
Redlaw, as he sat down to his solitary meal. 

Holly, Sir,” replied the quiet voice of Milly. 

“ That’s what I say myself, Sir,” interposed Mr. William, 
striking in with the butter-boat. “ Berries is so seasonable to 
the time of year ! — Brown gravy ! ” 

‘‘ Another Christmas come, another year gone ! ” murmured 
the Chemist, with a gloomy sigh. “ More figures in the 
lengthening sum of recollection that we work and work at to 
our torment, till Death idly jumbles all together, and rubs all 
out. So, Philip ! ” breaking off, and raising his voice as he 
addressed the old man, standing apart, with his glistening 
burden in his arms, from which the quiet Mrs. William took 
small branches, which she noiselessly trimmed with her scis- 
sors, and decorated the room with, while her aged father-in- 
law looked on much interested in the ceremony. 

“ My duty to you. Sir,” returned the old man. Should 
have spoke before. Sir, but know your ways, Mr. Redlaw 
— proud to say — and wait till spoke to! Merry Christmas, 
Sir, and Happy New Year, and many of ’em. Have had a 
pretty many of ’em myself — ha, ha ! — and may take the liberty 
of wishing ’em. I’m eighty-seven ! ” 

“ Have you had so many that were merry and happy ? ” 
asked the other. 

‘‘Ay, Sir, ever so many,” returned the old man. 

“ Is his memory impaired with age ? It is to be expected 
now,” said Mr. Redlaw, turning to the son, and speaking 
lower. 


THE HAUNTED MAN 


342 

'' Not a morsel of it, Sir,” replied Mr. William. “ That’s 
exactly what I say myself. Sir. There never was such a 
memory as my father’s. He’s the most wonderful man in 
the world. He don’t know what forgetting means. It’s the 
very observation I’m always making to Mrs. William, Sir, if 
you’ll believe me ! ” 

Mr. Swidger, in his polite desire to seem to acquiesce at 
all events, delivered this as if there were no iota of contra- 
diction in it, and it were all said in unbounded and unqualified 
assent. 

The Chemist pushed his plate away, and, rising from the 
table, walked across the room to where the old man stood 
looking at a little sprig of holly in his hand. 

It recalls the time when many of those years were old and 
new, then ? ” he said, observing him attentively, and touching 
him on the shoulder. “ Does it ? ” 

‘‘ Oh, many, many ! ” said Philip, half awaking from his 
reverie. “ I’m eighty-seven ! ” 

‘‘ Merry and happy, was it ? ” asked the Chemist in a low 
voice. Merry and happy, old man?” 

“ Maybe as high as that, no higher,” said the old man, 
holding out his hand a little way above the level of his knee, 
and looking retrospectively at his questioner, “ when I first 
remember ’em! Cold, sunshiny day it was, out a-walking, 
when some one — it was my mother as sure as you stand there, 
though I don’t know what her blessed face was like, for she 
took ill and died that Christmas-time — told me they were food 
for birds. The pretty little fellow thought — that’s me, you 
understand — that birds’ eyes were so bright, perhaps, because 
the berries that they lived on in the winter were so bright. 
I recollect that. And I’m eighty-seven 1 ” 

“ Merry and happy I ” mused the other, bending his dark 
eyes upon the stooping figure, with a smile of compassion. 
“ Merry and happy — and remember well ? ” 

Ay, ay, ay I ” resumed the old man, catching the last 
words. I remember ’em well in my school time, year after 
year, and all the merry-making that used to come along with 
them. I was a strong chap then, Mr. Redlaw; and, if you’ll 
believe me, hadn’t my match at football within ten mile. 


AND THE GHOST’S BARGAIN 343 

Where’s my son William ? Hadn’t my match at football, Wil- 
liam, within ten mile ! ” 

'' That’s what I always say, father ! ” returned the son 
promptly, and with great respect. “ You are a Swidger, if 
ever there was one of the family ! ” 

Dear ! ” said the old man, shaking his head as he again 
looked at the holly. “ His mother — my son William’s my 
youngest son — and I, have sat among ’em all, boys and girls, 
little children and babies, many a year, when the berries like 
these were not shining half so bright all round us, as their 
bright faces. Many of ’em are gone; she’s gone; and my son 
George (our eldest, who was her pride more than all the rest!) 
is fallen very low : but I can see them, when I look here, alive 
and healthy, as they used to be in those days; and I can see 
him, thank God, in his innocence. It’s a blessed thing to 
me at eighty-seven.” 

The keen look that had been fixed upon him with so much 
earnestness, had gradually sought the ground. 

“ When my circumstances got to be not so good as formerly, 
through not being honestly dealt by, and I first come here to 
be custodian,” said the old man, “ — which was upwards of 
fifty years ago — where’s my son William? More than half a 
century ago, William ! ” 

“ That’s what I say, father,” replied the son, as promptly 
and dutifully as before, “ that’s exactly where it is. Two 
times ought’s an ought, and twice five ten, and there’s a hun- 
dred of ’em.” 

“ It was quite a pleasure to know that one of our founders 
— or more correctly speaking,” said the old man, with a great 
glory in his subject and his knowledge of it, “ one of the learned 
gentlemen that helped endow us in Queen Elizabeth’s time, 
for we were founded afore her day — left in his will, among 
the other bequests he made us, so much to buy holly, for 
garnishing the walls and windows, come Christmas. There 
was something homely and friendly in it. Being but strange 
here, then, and coming at Christmas time, we took a liking 
for his very picter that hangs in what used to be, anciently, 
afore our ten poor gentlemen commuted for an annual stipend 
in money, our great Dinner Hall. — A sedate gentleman in a 


THE HAUNTED MAN 


344 

peaked beard, with a ruff round his neck, and a scroll below 
him, in old English letters, * Lord, keep my memory green ! ’ 
You know all about him, Mr. Redlaw?’’ 

I know the portrait hangs there, Philip.’* 

Yes, sure, it’s the second on the right, above the panel- 
ling. I was going to say — he has helped to keep my mem- 
ory green, I thank him; for going round the building every 
year, as I’m a-doing now, and freshening up the bare 
rooms with these branches and berries, freshens up my bare 
old brain. One year brings back another, and that year an- 
other, and those others numbers! At last, it seems to me 
as if the birth-time of our Lord was the birth-time of all I 
have ever had affection for, or mourned for, or delighted in, 
— and they’re a pretty many, for Pm eighty-seven ! ” 

“ Merry and happy,” murmured Redlaw to himself. 

The room began to darken strangely. 

“ So you see. Sir,” pursued old Philip, whose hale wintry 
cheek had warmed into a ruddier glow, and whose blue eyes 
had brightened while he spoke, ‘‘ I have plenty to keep, when 
I keep this present season. Now, where’s my quiet Mouse? 
Chattering’s the sin of my time of life, and there’s half the 
building to do yet, if the cold don’t freeze us first, or the wind 
don’t blow us away, or the darkness don’t swallow us up.” 

The quiet Mouse had brought her calm face to his side, and 
silently taken his arm, before he finished speaking. 

Come away, my dear,” said the old man. “ Mr. Redlaw 
won’t settle to his dinner, otherwise, till it’s cold as the winter. 
I hope you’ll excuse me rambling on. Sir, and I wish you 
good night, and, once again, a merry — ” 

'' Stay ! ” said Mr. Redlaw, resuming his place at the table, 
more, it would have seemed from his manner, to reassure the 
old keeper, than in any remembrance of his own appetite. 
“ Spare me another moment, Philip. William, you were go- 
ing to tell me something to your excellent wife’s honour. It 
will not be disagreeable to her to hear you praise her. What 
was it ? ” 

“ Why, that’s where it is, you see. Sir,” returned Mr. Wil- 
liam Swidger, looking towards his wife in considerable em- 
barrassment. Mrs. William’s got her eye upon me.” 

‘‘ But you’re not afraid of Mrs. William’s eye ? ” 


AND THE GHOST’S BARGAIN 345 

Why, no, Sir,” returned Mr. Swidger, “ that’s what I say 
myself. It wasn’t made to be afraid of. It wouldn’t have 
been made so mild, if that was the intention. But I wouldn’t 
like to — Milly! — him, you know. Down in the Buildings.” 

Mr. William, standing behind the table, and rummaging 
disconcertedly among the objects upon it, directed persuasive 
glances at Mrs. William, and secret jerks of his head and 
thumb at Mr. Redlaw, as alluring her towards him. 

‘‘ Him, you know, my love,” said Mr. William. Down in 
the Buildings. Tell, my dear! You’re the works of Shakes- 
peare in comparison with myself. Down in the Buildings, 
you know, my love. — Student.” 

“ Student ? ” repeated Mr. Redlaw, raising his head. 

That’s what I say. Sir 1 ” cried Mr. William, in the ut- 
most animation of assent. If it wasn’t the poor student 
down in the Buildings, why should you wish to hear it from 
Mrs. William’s lips? Mrs. William, my dear — Buildings.” 

I didn’t know,” said Milly, with a quiet frankness, free 
from any haste or confusion, that William had said any- 
thing about it, or I wouldn’t have come. I asked him not to. 
It’s a sick young gentleman. Sir — and very poor, I am afraid 
— who is too ill to go home this holiday-time, and lives, un- 
known to any one, in but a common kind of lodging for a 
gentleman, down in Jerusalem Buildings. That’s all, Sir.” 

“ Why have I never heard of him ? ” said the Chemist, ris- 
ing hurriedly. “ Why has he not made his situation known 
to me? Sick! — ^give me my hat and cloak. Poor! — what 
house? — what number?” 

Oh, you mustn’t go there. Sir,” said Milly, leaving her 
father-in-law, and calmly confronting him with her collected 
little face and folded hands. 

“ Not go there? ” 

O dear, no ! ” said Milly, shaking her head as at a most 
manifest and self-evident impossibility. “ It couldn’t be 
thought of ! ” 

“ What do you mean ? Why not ? ” 

Why, you see. Sir,” said Mr. William Swidger, per- 
suasively and confidentially, “ that’s what I say. Depend 
upon it, the young gentleman would never have made his 
situation known to one of his own sex. Mrs, William has 


THE HAUNTED MAN 


346 

got into his confidence, but that’s quite different. They all 
confide in Mrs. William; they all trust her. A man, Sir, 
couldn’t have got a whisper out of him; but woman, Sir, and 
Mrs. William combined — ! ” 

'' There is good sense and delicacy in what you say, Wil- 
liam,” returned Mr. Redlaw, observant of the gentle and com- 
posed face at his shoulder. And laying his finger on his lip, 
he secretly put his purse into her hand. 

O dear no, Sir ! ” cried Milly, giving it back again. 

Worse and worse! Couldn’t be dreamed of! ” 

Such a staid matter-of-fact housewife she was, and so un- 
ruffled by the momentary haste of this rejection, that, an 
instant afterwards, she was tidily picking up a few leaves 
which had strayed from between her scissors and her apron, 
when she had arranged the holly. 

Finding, when she rose from her stooping posture, that Mr. 
Redlaw was still regarding her with doubt and astonishment, 
she quietly repeated — looking about, the while, for any other 
fragments that might have escaped her observation: 

“ O dear no. Sir ! He said that of all the world he would 
not be known to you, or receive help from you — though he 
is a student in your class. I have made no terms of secrecy 
with you, but I trust to your honour completely.” 

“Why did he say so?” 

“ Indeed I can’t tell. Sir,” said Milly, after thinking a little, 
“ because I’m not at all clever, you know ; and I wanted to 
be useful to him in making things neat and comfortable about 
him, and employed myself that way. But I know he is poor, 
and lonely, and I think he is somehow neglected too. — How 
dark it is ! ” 

The room had darkened more and more. There was a 
very heavy gloom and shadow gathering behind the Chemist’s 
chair. 

“ What more about him ? ” he asked. 

“ He is engaged to be married when he can afford it,” 
said Milly, “ and is studying, I think, to qualify himself to 
earn a living. I have seen, a long time, that he has studied 
hard and denied himself much. — How very dark it is ! ” 

“ It’s turned colder, too,” said the old man, rubbing his 
hands. “ There’s a chill and dismal feeling in the room. 


AND THE GHOST’S BARGAIN 347 

Where’s my son William? William, my boy, turn the lamp, 
and rouse the fire ! ” 

Milly’s voice resumed, like quiet music very softly played: 

“ He muttered in his broken sleep yesterday afternoon, 
after talking to me” (this was to herself) '‘about some one 
dead, and some great wrong done that could never be for- 
gotten ; but whether to him or to another person, I don’t know. 
Not hy him, I am sure.” 

“ And, in short, Mrs. William, you see — which she wouldn’t 
say herself, Mr. Redlaw, if she was to stop here till the new 
year after this next one — ” said Mr. William, coming up to 
him to speak in his ear, " has done him worlds of good 1 
Bless you, worlds of good! All at home just the same as 
ever — my father made as snug and comfortable — not a crumb 
of litter to be found in the house, if you were to offer fifty 
pound ready money for it — Mrs. William apparently never 
out of the way — ^yet Mrs. William backwards and forwards, 
backwards and forwards, up and down, up and down, a mother 
to him ! ” 

The room turned darker and colder, and the gloom and 
shadow gathering behind the chair was heavier. 

" Not content with this. Sir, Mrs. William goes and finds, 
this very night, when she was coming home (why it’s not 
above a couple of hours ago), a creature more like a young 
wild beast than a young child, shivering upon a doorstep. 
What does Mrs. William do, but brings it home to dry it, and 
feed it, and keep it till our old Bounty of food and flannel is 
given away, on Christmas morning! If it ever felt a fire be- 
fore, it’s as much as ever it did; for it’s sitting in the old 
Lodge chimney, staring at ours as if its ravenous eyes would 
never shut again. It’s sitting there, at least,” said Mr. Wil- 
liam, correcting himself, on reflection, " unless it’s bolted ! ” 

“ Heaven keep her happy ! ” said the Chemist aloud, " and 
you too, Philip ! and you, William ! I must consider what to 
do in this. I may desire to see this student, I’ll not detain 
you longer now. Good night ! ” 

“ I thank’ee. Sir, I thank’ee ! ” said the old man, “ for 
Mouse, and for my son William, and for myself. Where’s 
my son William? William, you take the lantern and go on 
first, through them long dark passages, as you did last year 


THE HAUNTED MAN 


348 

and the year afore. Ha, ha ! I remember — though Tm 
eighty-seven ! ‘ Lord, keep my memory green ! ’ It’s a very 

good prayer, Mr. Redlaw, that of the learned gentleman in 
the peaked beard, with a ruff round his neck — ^hangs up, sec- 
ond on the right above the panelling, in what used to be, afore 
our ten poor gentlemen commuted, our great Dinner Hall. 
‘ Lord, keep my memory green ! ’ It’s very good and pious. 
Sir. Amen ! Amen ! ” 

As they passed out and shut the heavy door, which, how- 
ever carefully withheld, fired a long train of thundering re- 
verberations when it shut at last, the room turned darker. 

As he fell a-musing in his chair alone, the healthy holly 
withered on the wall, and dropped — dead branches. 

As the gloom and shadow thickened behind him, in that 
place where it had been gathering so darkly, it took, by slow 
degrees, — or out of it there came, by some unreal, unsub- 
stantial process — not to be traced by any human sense, — an 
awful likeness of himself ! 

Ghastly and cold, colourless in its leaden face and hands, 
but with his features, and his bright eyes, and his grizzled 
hair, and dressed in the gloomy shadow of his dress, it came 
into his terrible appearance of existence, motionless, without 
a sound. As he leaned his arm upon the elbow of his chair, 
ruminating before the fire, it leaned upon the chair-back, 
close above him, with its appalling copy of his face looking 
where his face looked, and bearing the expression his face 
bore. 

This, then, was the Something that had passed and gone 
already. This was the dread companion of the haunted man! 

It took, for some moments, no more apparent heed of him, 
than he of it. The Christmas Waits were playing some- 
where in the distance, and, through his thoughtfulness, he 
seemed to listen to the music. It seemed to listen too. 

At length he spoke; without moving or lifting up his face. 

‘‘ Here again I ” he said. 

Here again,” replied the Phantom. 

I see you in the fire,” said the haunted man ; I hear you 
in music, in the wind, in the dead stillness of the night.” 

The Phantom moved its head, assenting. 

"‘Why do you come, to haunt me thus?” 



COPYRIGHT, 1913, BY FREDERICK A. STOKES COMPANY 


‘“HERE AGAIN,’ REPLIED THE PPIAXTOM ”— 348 





349 


AND THE GHOST’S BARGAIN 

** I come as I am called,” replied the Ghost. 

“ No. Unbidden,” exclaimed the Chemist. 

“ Unbidden be it,” said the Spectre. ‘‘ It is enough. I 
am here.” 

Hitherto the light of the fire had shone on the two faces 
— if the dread lineaments behind the chair might be called 
a face — ^both addressed towards it, as at first, and neither 
looking at the other. But, now, the haunted man turned, 
suddenly, and stared upon the Ghost. The Ghost, as sud- 
den in its motion, passed to before the chair, and stared on 
him. 

The living man, and the animated image of himself dead, 
might so have looked, the one upon the other. An awful 
survey, in a lonely and remote part of an empty old pile of 
building, on a winter night, with the loud wind going by upon 
its journey of mystery — whence, or whither, no man knowing 
since the world began — and the stars, in unimaginable mil- 
lions, glittering through it, from eternal space, where the 
world’s bulk is as a grain, and its hoary age is infancy. 

“ Look upon me ! ” said the Spectre. “ I am he, neglected 
in my youth, and miserably poor, who strove and suffered, 
and still strove and suffered, until I hewed out knowledge 
from the mine where it was buried, and made rugged steps 
thereof, for my worn feet to rest and rise on.” 

“ I am that man,” returned the Chemist. 

“ No mother’s self-denying love,” pursued the Phantom, 
“ no father’s counsel, aided me. A stranger came into my 
father’s place when I was but a child, and I was easily an 
alien from my mother’s heart. My parents, at the best, were 
of that sort whose care soon ends, and whose duty is soon 
done ; who cast their offspring loose, early, as birds do theirs ; 
and, if they do well, claim the merit; and, if ill, the pity.” 

It paused, and seemed to tempt and goad him with its 
look, and with the manner of its speech, and with its smile. 

“ I am he,” pursued the Phantom, who, in this struggle 
upward, found a friend. I made him — won him — abound him 
to me! We worked together, side by side. All the love and 
confidence that in my earlier youth had had no outlet, and 
found no expression, I bestowed on him.” 

Not all,” said Redlaw, hoarsely. 


THE HAUNTED MAN 


350 

No, not all,” returned the Phantom. “ I had a sister.” 

The haunted man, with his head resting on his hands, re- 
plied, “ I had ! ” The Phantom, with an evil smile, drew 
closer to the chair, and resting its chin upon its folded hands, its 
folded hands upon the back, and looking down into his face 
with searching eyes, that seemed instinct with fire, went on: 

“ Such glimpses of the light of home as I had ever known, 
had streamed from her. How young she was, how fair, how 
loving! I took her to the first poor roof that I was master 
of, and made it rich. She came into the darkness of my life, 
and made it bright. — She is before me ! ” 

I saw her, in the fire, but now. I hear her in music, in the 
wind, in the dead stillness of the night,” returned the haunted 
man. 

''Did he love her?” said the Phantom, echoing his con- 
templative tone. ‘‘ I think he did once. I am sure he did. 
Better had she loved him less — less secretly, less dearly, from 
the shallower depths of a more divided heart I ” 

“ Let me forget it ! ” said the Chemist, with an angry mo- 
tion of his hand. Let me blot it from my memory I ” 

The Spectre, without stirring, and with its unwinking, cruel 
eyes still fixed upon his face, went on : 

‘‘ A dream, like hers, stole upon my own life.” 

“ It did,” said Redlaw. 

" A love, as like hers,” pursued the Phantom, '' as my in- 
ferior nature might cherish, arose in my own heart. I was too 
poor to bind its object to my fortune then, by any thread of 
promise or entreaty. I loved her far too well, to seek to do it. 
But, more than ever I had striven in my life, I strove to 
climb. Only an inch gained, brought me something nearer 
to the height. I toiled up! In the late pauses of my labour 
at that time, — ^my sister (sweet companion!) still sharing with 
me the expiring embers and the cooling hearth, — when day 
was breaking, what pictures of the future did I see ! ” 

“ I saw them, in the fire, but now,” he murmured. “ They 
come back to me in music, in the wind, in the dead stillness 
of the night, in the revolving years.” 

‘‘ — Pictures of my own domestic life, in after-time, with 
her who was the inspiration of my toil. Pictures of my sister, 
made the wife of my dear friend, on equal terms — for he had 


AND THE GHOST’S BARGAIN 


351 

some inheritance, we none — pictures of our sobered age and 
mellowed happiness, and of the golden links, extending back 
so far, that should bind us, and our children, in a radiant gar- 
land,” said the Phantom. 

'' Pictures,” said the haunted man, that were delusions. 
Why is it my doom to remember them too well ! ” 

‘‘ Delusions,” echoed the Phantom in its changeless voice, 
and glaring on him with his changeless eyes. For my friend 
(in whose breast my confidence was locked as in my own), 
passing between me and the centre of the system of my hopes 
and struggles, won her to himself, and shattered my frail 
universe. My sister, doubly dear, doubly devoted, doubly 
cheerful in my home, lived on to see me famous, and my old 
ambition so rewarded when its spring was broken, and 
then — ” 

“ Then died,” he interposed. Died, gentle as ever ; happy ; 
and with no concern but for her brother. Peace ! ” 

The Phantom watched him silently. 

Remembered ! ” said the haunted man, after a pause. 

Yes. So well remembered, that even now, when years have 
passed, and nothing is more idle or more visionary to me than 
the boyish love so long outlived, I think of it with sympathy, 
as if it were a younger brother’s or a son’s. Sometimes I 
even wonder when her heart first inclined to him, and how 
it had been affected towards me. — Not lightly, once, I think. 
— But that is nothing. Early unhappiness, a wound from 
a hand I loved and trusted, and a loss that nothing can re- 
place, outlive such fancies.” 

“ Thus,” said the Phantom, I bear within me a Sorrow 
and a Wrong. Thus I prey upon myself. Thus, memory 
is my curse ; and, if I could forget my sorrow and my wrong, 
I would ! ” 

“ Mocker ! ” said the Chemist, leaping up, and making, with 
a wrathful hand, at the throat of his other self. “ Why have 
I always that taunt in my ears ? ” 

“Forbear!” exclaimed the Spectre in an awful voice. 
“ Lay a hand on Me, and die ! ” 

He stopped midway, as if its words had paralysed 
him, and stood looking on it. It had glided from him; it 
had its arm raised .high in warning; and a smile passed over 


352 THE HAUNTED MAN 

its unearthly features, as it reared its dark figure in tri- 
umph. 

‘Hf I could forget my sorrow and wrong, I would,’’ the 
Ghost repeated. If I could forget my sorrow and my wrong, 
I would ! ” 

“ Evil spirit of myself,” returned the haunted man, in a 
low, trembling tone, ‘‘ my life is darkened by that incessant 
whisper.” 

“ It is an echo,” said the Phantom. 

“If it be an echo of my thoughts — as now, indeed, I know 
it is,” rejoined the haunted man, “ why should I, therefore, 
be tormented? It is not a selfish thought. I suffer it to 
range beyond myself. All men and women have their sor- 
rows, — ^most of them their wrongs; ingratitude, and sordid 
jealousy, and interest, besetting all degrees of life. Who 
would not forget their sorrows and their wrongs ? ” 

“ Who would not, truly, and be the happier and better for 
it?” said the Phantom. 

“ These revolutions of years, which we commemorate,” 
proceeded Redlaw, “what do they recall! Are there any 
minds in which they do not re-awaken some sorrow, or some 
trouble? What is the remembrance of the old man who was 
here to-night? A tissue of sorrow and trouble.” 

“ But common natures,” said the Phantom, with its evil 
smile upon its glassy face, “ unenlightened minds and ordi- 
nary spirits, do not feel or reason on these things like men 
of higher cultivation and profounder thought.” 

“Tempter,” answered Redlaw, “whose hollow look and 
voice I dread more than words can express, and from whom 
some dim foreshadowing of greater fear is stealing over me 
while I speak, I hear again an echo of my own mind.” 

“ Receive it as a proof that I am powerful,” returned the 
Ghost. “Hear what I offer! Forget the sorrow, wrong, 
and trouble you have known ! ” 

“ Forget them ! ” he repeated. 

“ I have the power to cancel their remembrance — to leave 
but very faint, confused traces of them, that will die out 
soon,” returned the Spectre. “ Say! Is it done?” 

“ Stay ! ” cried the haunted man, arresting by a terrified 
gesture the uplifted hand. “ I tremble with distrust and 


AND THE GHOST’S BARGAIN 353 

doubt of you; and the dim fear you cast upon me deepens 
into a nameless horror I can hardly bear. — I would not de- 
prive myself of any kindly recollection, or any sympathy that 
is good for me, or others. What shall I lose, if I assent to 
this ? What else will pass from my remembrance ? ” 

“No knowledge; no result of study; nothing but the in- 
tertwisted chain of feelings and associations, each in its turn 
dependent on, and nourished by, the banished recollections. 
Those will go.” 

“ Are they so many ? ” said the haunted man, reflecting 
in alarm. 

“ They have been wont to show themselves in the fire, in 
music, in the wind, in the dead stillness of the night, in the 
revolving years,” returned the Phantom scornfully. 

“ In nothing else ? ” 

The Phantom held its peace. 

But having stood before him, silent, for a little while, it 
moved towards the fire; then stopped. 

“ Decide ! ” it said, “ before the opportunity is lost ! ” 

“ A moment ! I call Heaven to witness,” said the agitated 
man, “that I have never been a hater of my kind, — never 
morose, indifferent, or hard, to anything around me. If, liv- 
ing here alone, I have made too much of all that was and 
might have been, and too little of what is, the evil, I believe, 
has fallen on me, and not on others. But, if there were 
poison in my body, should I not, possessed of antidotes and 
knowledge how to use them, use them? If there be poison 
in my mind, and through this fearful shadow I can cast 
it out, shall I not cast it out ? ” 

“ Say,” said the Spectre, “ is it done ? ” 

“ A moment longer ! ” he answered hurriedly. “ I would 
forget it if I could! Have / thought that, alone, or has it 
been the thought of thousands upon thousands, generation 
after generation? All human memory is fraught with sor- 
row and trouble. My memory is as the memory of other 
men, but other men have not this choice. Yes, I close the 
bargain. Yes ! I will forget my sorrow, wrong, and 
trouble ! ” 

“ Say,” said the Spectre, “ is it done ? ” 

“It is!” 


THE HAUNTED MAN 


354 

“ It is. And take this with you, man whom I here re- 
nounce! The gift that I have given, you shall give again, 
go where you will. Without recovering yourself the power 
that you have yielded up, you shall henceforth destroy its 
like in all whom you approach. Your wisdom has discov- 
ered that the memory of sorrow, wrong, and trouble is the 
lot of all mankind, and that mankind would be the happier, 
in its other memories, without it. Go! Be its benefactor! 
Freed from such remembrance, from this hour, carry in- 
voluntarily the blessing of such freedom with you. Its dif- 
fusion is inseparable and inalienable from you. Go ! Be 
happy in the good you have won, and in the good you do ! ” 

The Phantom, which had held its bloodless hand above 
him while it spoke, as if in some unholy invocation, or some 
ban; and which had gradually advanced its eyes so close to 
his that he could see how they did not participate in the ter- 
rible smile upon its face, but were a fixed, unalterable, steady 
horror; melted before him and was gone. 

As he stood rooted to the spot, possessed by fear and won- 
der, and imagining he heard repeated in melancholy echoes, 
dying away fainter and fainter, the words, ‘‘ Destroy its like 
in all whom you approach ! ” a shrill cry reached his ears. 
It came, not from the passages beyond the door, but from 
another part of the old building, and sounded like the cry 
of some one in the dark who had lost the way. 

He looked confusedly upon his hands and limbs, as if to 
be assured of his identity, and then shouted in reply, loudly 
and wildly ; for there was a strangeness and terror upon him, 
as if he too were lost. 

The cry responding, and being nearer, he caught up the 
lamp, and raised a heavy curtain in the wall, by which he 
was accustomed to pass into and out of the theatre where 
he lectured, — which adjoined his room. Associated with 
youth and animation, and a high amphitheatre of faces which 
his entrance charmed to interest in a moment, it was a 
ghostly place when all this life was faded out of it, and stared 
upon him like an emblem of Death. 

Hallo ! ” he cried. Hallo ! This way ! Come to the 
light ! ” When, as he held the curtain with one hand, and 
with the other raised the lamp and tried to pierce the gloom 


AND THE GHOST’S BARGAIN 355 

that filled the place, something rushed past him into the room 
like a wild-cat, and crouched down in a corner. 

What is it? ” he said, hastily. 

He might have asked What is it?” even haij he seen it 
well, as presently he did when he stood looking at it gathered 
up in its corner. 

A bundle of tatters, held together by a hand, in size and 
form almost an infant’s, but in its greedy, desperate little 
clutch, a bad old man’s. A face rounded and smoothed by 
some half-dozen years, but pinched and twisted by the ex- 
periences of a life. Bright eyes, but not youthful. Naked 
feet, beautiful in their childish delicacy, — ugly in the blood 
and dirt that cracked upon them. A baby savage, a young 
monster, a child who had never been a child, a creature who 
might live to take the outward form of man but who, within, 
would live and perish a mere beast. 

Used, already, to be worried and hunted like a beast, the 
boy crouched down as he was looked at, and looked back 
again, and interposed his arm to ward off the expected blow. 

“ I’ll bite,” he said, ‘‘ if you hit me! ” 

The time had been, and not many minutes since, when such 
a sight as this would have wrung the Chemist’s heart. He 
looked upon it now, coldly; but with a heavy effort to re- 
member something — he did not know what — he asked the boy 
what he did there, and whence he came. 

“ Where’s the woman ? ” he replied. I want to find the 
woman.” 

“ Who?” 

‘‘ The woman. Her that brought me here, and set me by 
the large fire. She was so long gone, that I went to look 
for her, and lost myself. I don’t want you. I want the 
woman.” 

He made a spring, so suddenly, to get away, that the dull 
sound of his naked feet upon the floor was near the curtain, 
when Redlaw caught him by his rags. 

“ Come ! you let me go ! ” muttered the boy, struggling, and 
clenching his teeth. ‘‘ I’ve done nothing to you. Let me go, 
will you, to the woman 1 ” 

That is not the way. There is a nearer one,” said Red- 
law, detaining him, in the same blank effort to remember some 


THE HAUNTED MAN 


356 

association that ought, of right, to bear upon this monstrous 
object. “What is your name?’^ 

“ Got none.” 

“ Where do you live ? ” 

“Live! What’s that?” 

The boy shook his hair from his eyes to look at him for 
a moment, and then, twisting round his legs and wrestling 
with him, broke again into his repetition of “ You let me go, 
will you? I want to find the woman.” 

The Chemist led him to the door. “ This way,” he said, 
looking at him still confusedly, but with repugnance and avoid- 
ance, growing out of his coldness. “ I’ll take you to her.” 

The sharp eyes in the child’s head, wandering round the 
room, lighted on the table where the remnants of the dinner 
were. 

“ Give me some of that ! ” he said, covetously. 

“ Has she not fed you ? ” 

“ I shall be hungry again to-morrow, shan’t I ? Ain’t 1 
hungry every day ? ” 

Finding himself released, he bounded at the table like some 
small animal of prey, and hugging to his breast bread and 
meat, and his own rags, all together, said: 

“ There I Now take me to the woman ! ” 

As the Chemist, with a new-born dislike to touch him, 
sternly motioned him to follow, and was going out of the door, 
he trembled and stopped. 

“ The gift that I have given, you shall give again, go where 
you will ! ” 

The Phantom’s words were blowing in the wind, and the 
wind blew chill upon him. 

“ I’ll not go there, to-night,” he murmured faintly. “ I’ll 
go nowhere to-night. Boy! straight down this long-arched 
passage, and past the great dark door into the yard, — you see 
the fire shining on the window there.” 

“The woman’s fire?” inquired the boy. 

He nodded, and the naked feet had sprung away. He 
came back with his lamp, locked his door hastily, and sat 
down in his chair, covering his face like one who was fright- 
ened at himself. 

For now he was, indeed, alone. Alone, alone. 


AND THE GHOST’S BARGAIN 


357 


CHAPTER II 

THE GIFT DIFFUSED 

A SMALL man in a small parlour, partitioned off from 
a small shop by a small screen, pasted all over with 
small scraps of newspapers. In company with the small man, 
was almost any amount of small children, you may please 
to name — at least it seemed so; they made, in that very 
limited sphere of action, such an imposing effect, in point of 
numbers. 

Of these small fry, two had, by some strong machinery, 
been got into bed in a corner, where they might have re- 
posed snugly enough in the sleep of innocence, but for a 
constitutional propensity to keep awake, and also to scuffle 
in and out of bed. The immediate occasion of these pred- 
atory dashes at the waking world, was the construction of 
an oyster-shell wall in a corner, by two other youths of tender 
age; on which fortification the two in bed made harassing 
descents (like those accursed Piets and Scots who beleaguer 
the early historical studies of most young Britons), and then 
withdrew to their own territory. 

In addition to the stir attendant on these inroads, and the 
retorts of the invaded, who pursued hotly, and made lunges 
at the bedclothes under which the marauders took refuge, an- 
other little boy, in another little bed, contributed his mite of 
confusion to the family stock, by casting his boots upon the 
waters; in other words, by launching these and several small 
objects, inoffensive in themselves, though of a hard substance 
considered as missiles, at the disturbers of his repose, — who 
were not slow to return these compliments. 

Besides which, another little boy — ^the biggest there, but 
still little — was tottering to and fro, bent on one side, and 
considerably affected in his knees by the weight of a large 
baby, which he was supposed by a fiction that obtains some- 
times in sanguine families, to be hushing to sleep. But oh! 
the inexhaustible regions of contemplation and watchfulness 
into which this baby’s eyes were then only beginning to com- 
pose themselves to stare, over his unconscious shoulder! 


THE HAUNTED MAN 


358 

It was a very Moloch of a baby, on whose insatiate altar 
the whole existence of this particular young brother was of- 
fered up a daily sacrifice. Its personality may be said to have 
consisted in its never being quiet, in any one place, for five 
consecutive minutes, and never going to sleep when required. 
“ Tetterby’s baby ’’ was as well known in the neighbourhood 
as the postman or the pot-boy. It roved from door-step to 
door-step, in the arms of little Johnny Tetterby, and lagged 
heavily at the rear of troops of juveniles who followed the 
Tumblers or the Monkey, and came up, all on one side, a little 
too late for everything that was attractive, from Monday 
morning until Saturday night. Wherever childhood congre- 
gated to play, there was little Moloch making Johnny fag and 
toil. Wherever Johnny desired to stay, little Moloch became 
fractious, and would not remain. Whenever Johnny wanted 
to go out, Moloch was asleep, and must be watched. When- 
ever Johnny wanted to stay at home, Moloch was awake, and 
must be taken out. Yet Johnny was verily persuaded that it 
was a faultless baby, without its peer in the realm of England, 
and was quite content to catch meek glimpses of things in 
general from behind its skirts, or over its limp flapping bon- 
net, and to go staggering about with it like a very little porter 
with a very large parcel, which was not directed to anybody, 
and could never be delivered anywhere. 

The small man who sat in the small parlour, making fruit- 
less attempts to read his newspaper peaceably in the midst of 
this disturbance, was the father of the family, and the chief 
of the firm described in the inscription over the little shop 
front, by the name and title of A. Tetterby and Co., News- 
men. Indeed, strictly speaking, he was the only personage 
answering to that designation, as Co. was a mere poetical ab- 
straction, altogether baseless and impersonal. 

Tetterby’s was the corner shop in Jerusalem Buildings. 
There was a good show of literature in the window, chiefly 
consisting of picture-newspapers out of date, and serial pirates, 
and footpads. Walking-sticks, likewise, and marbles, were 
included in the stock in trade. It had once extended into 
the light confectionery line; but it would seem that those 
elegancies of life were not in demand about Jerusalem Build- 
ings, for nothing connected with that branch of commerce 


AND THE GHOSPS BARGAIN 359 

remained in the window, except a sort of small glass lantern 
containing a languishing mass of bulhs-eyes, which had 
melted in the summer and congealed in the winter until all 
hope of ever getting them out, or of eating them without 
eating the lantern too, was gone for ever. Tetterby’s had 
tried its hand at several things. It had once made a feeble 
little dart at the toy business; for, in another lantern, there 
was a heap of minute wax dolls, all sticking together upside 
down, in the direst confusion, with their feet on one an- 
other’s heads, and a precipitate of broken arms and legs at 
the bottom. It had made a move in the millinery direction, 
which a few dry, wiry bonnet-shapes remained in a corner 
of the window to attest. It had fancied that a living might 
lie hidden in the tobacco trade, and had stuck up a represen- 
tation of a native of each of the three integral portions of 
the British Empire, in the act of consuming that fragrant 
weed; with a poetic legend attached, importing that united in 
one cause they sat and joked, one chewed tobacco, one took 
snuff, one smoked ; but nothing seemed to have come of it — ex- 
cept flies. Time had been when it had put a forlorn trust in 
imitative jewellery, for in one pane of glass there was a card 
of cheap seals, and another of pencil-cases, and a mysterious 
black amulet of inscrutable intention, labelled ninepence. But, 
to that hour Jerusalem Buildings had bought none of them. 
In short, Tetterby’s had tried so hard to get a livelihood out 
of Jerusalem Buildings in one way or other, and appeared 
to have done so indifferently in all, that the best position 
in the firm was too evidently Co.^s ; Co., as a bodiless crea- 
tion, being untroubled with the vulgar inconveniences of 
hunger and thirst, being chargeable neither to the poor’s- 
rates nor the assessed taxes, and having no young family to 
provide for. 

Tetterby himself, however, in his little parlour, as already 
mentioned, having the presence of a young family impressed 
upon his mind in a manner too clamorous to be disregarded, 
or to comport with the quiet perusal of a newspaper, laid 
down his paper, wheeled, in his distraction, a few times 
round the parlour, like an undecided carrier-pigeon, made an 
ineffectual rush at one or two flying little figures in bed- 
gowns that skimmed past him^ and then, bearing suddenly 


THE HAUNTED MAN 


360 

dowa upon the only unoffending member of the family, boxed 
the ears of little Moloch’s nurse. 

You bad boy ! ” said Mr. Tetterby, ‘‘ haven’t you any feel- 
ing for your poor father after the fatigues and anxieties of a 
hard winter’s day, since five o’clock in the morning, but must 
you wither his rest, and corrode his latest intelligence, with 
your wicious tricks? Isn’t it enough, Sir, that your brother 
’Dolphus is toiling and moiling in the fog and cold, and you 
rolling in the lap of luxury with a — with a baby, and every- 
thing you can wish for,” said Mr. Tetterby, heaping this up 
as a great climax of blessings, but must you make a wilder- 
ness of home, and maniacs of your parents? Must you, 
Johnny? Hey?” At each interrogation, Mr. Tetterby made 
a feint of boxing his ears again, but thought better of it, and 
held his hand. 

“ Oh, father ! ” whimpered Johnny, ‘‘ when I wasn’t doing 
anything. I’m sure, but taking such care of Sally, and getting 
her to sleep. Oh, father ! ” 

“ I wish my little woman would come home ! ” said Mr. 
Tetterby, relenting and repenting, “ I only wish my little 
woman would come home ! I ain’t fit to deal with ’em. They 
make my head go round, and get the better of me. Oh, 
Johnny ! Isn’t it enough that your dear mother has provided 
you with that sweet sister ? ” indicating Moloch. “ Isn’t it 
enough that you were seven boys before, without a ray of 
gal, and that your dear mother went through what she did 
go through, on purpose that you might all of you have a little 
sister, but must you so behave yourself as to make my head 
swim ? ” 

Softening more and more, as his own tender feelings and 
those of his injured son were worked on, Mr. Tetterby con- 
cluded by embracing him, and immediately breaking away 
to catch one of the real delinquents. A reasonably good 
start occurring, he succeeded, after a short but smart run, 
and some rather severe cross-country work under and over 
the bedsteads, and in and out among the intricacies of the 
chairs, in capturing this infant, whom he condignly punished, 
and bore to bed. This example had a powerful, and ap- 
parently, mesmeric influence on him of the boots, who in- 


AND THE GHOST’S BARGAIN 361 

stantly fell into a deep sleep, though he had been, but a moment 
before, broad awake, and in the highest possible feather. 
Nor was it lost upon the two young architects, who retired 
to bed, in an adjoining closet, with great privacy and speed. 
The comrade of the Intercepted One also shrinking into his 
nest with similar discretion, Mr. Tetterby, when he paused 
for breath, found himself unexpectedly in a scene of peace. 

“ My little woman herself,” said Mr. Tetterby, wiping his 
flushed face, “ could hardly have done it better ! I only wish 
my little woman had had it to do, I do indeed ! ” 

Mr. Tetterby sought upon his screen for a passage ap- 
propriate to be impressed upon his children’s minds on the 
occasion, and read the following. 

“ ' It is an undoubted fact that all remarkable men have 
had remarkable mothers, and have respected them in after 
life as their best friends.’ Think of your own remarkable 
mother, my boys,” said Mr. Tetterby, “ and know her value 
while she is still among you ! ” 

He sat down again in his chair by the fire, and composed 
himself, cross-legged, over his newspaper. 

‘‘ Let anybody, I don’t care who it is, get out of bed again,” 
said Tetterby, as a general proclamation, delivered in a very 
soft-hearted manner, “ and astonishment will be the portion 
of that respected contemporary ! ” — which expression Mr. 
Tetterby selected from his screen. Johnny, my child, take 
care of your only sister, Sally; for she’s the brightest gem 
that ever sparkled on your early brow.” 

Johnny sat down on a little stool, and devotedly crushed 
himself beneath the weight of Moloch. 

Ah, what a gift that baby is to you, Johnny ! ” said 
his father, and how thankful you ought to be ! ‘ It is not 
generally known,’ Johnny,” he was now referring to the screen 
again, “ ‘ but it is a fact ascertained, by accurate calculations, 
that the following immense percentage of babies never at- 
tain to two years old ; that is to say — ’ ” 

Oh, don’t, father, please ! ” cried Johnny. '' I can’t bear 
it, when I think of Sally.” 

Mr. Tetterby desisting, Johnny, with a profounder sense 
of his trust, wiped his eyes, and hushed his sister. 


THE HAUNTED MAN 


362 

‘‘ Your brother ’Dolphus/’ said his father, poking the fire, 
‘‘ is late to-night, Johnny, and will come home like a lump of 
ice. What’s got your precious mother ? ” 

Here’s mother, and ’Dolphus too, father ! ” exclaimed 
Johnny, “ I think.” 

“You’re right!” returned his father, listening. “Yes, 
that’s the footstep of my little woman.” 

The process of induction, by which Mr. Tetterby had come 
to the conclusion that his wife was a little woman, was his 
own secret. She would have made two editions of himself, 
very easily. Considered as an individual, she was rather 
remarkable for being robust and portly; but considered with 
reference to her husband, her dimensions became magnificent. 
Nor did they assume a less imposing proportion, when studied 
with reference to the size of her seven sons, who were but 
diminutive. In the case of Sally, however, Mrs. Tetterby had 
asserted herself at last; as nobody knew better than the 
victim Johnny, who weighed and measured that exacting idol 
every hour in the day. 

Mrs. Tetterby, who had been marketing, and carried a basket, 
threw back her bonnet and shawl, and sitting down, fatigued, 
commanded Johnny to bring his sweet charge to her straight- 
way, for a kiss. Johnny having complied, and gone back to 
his stool and again crushed himself. Master Adolphus Tet- 
terby, who had by this time unwound his torso out of a 
prismatic comforter, apparently interminable, requested the 
same favour. Johnny having again complied, and again gone 
back to his stool, and again crushed himself, Mr. Tetterby, 
struck by a sudden thought, preferred the same claim on 
his own parental part. The satisfaction of this third desire 
completely exhausted the sacrifice, who had hardly breath 
enough left to get back to his stool, crush himself again, and 
pant at his relations. 

“ Whatever you do, Johnny,” said Mrs. Tetterby, shak- 
ing her head, “ take care of her, or never look your mother 
in the face again.” 

“ Nor your brother,” said Adolphus. 

“ Nor your father, Johnny,” added Mr. Tetterby. 

Johnny much affected by this conditional renunciation of 
him, looked down at Moloch’s eyes to see that they were 


AND THE GHOST’S BARGAIN 363 

all right, so far, and skilfully patted her back (which was 
uppermost), and rocked her with his foot. 

“ Are you wet, ’Dolphus, my boy ? ” said his father. 
‘‘ Come and take my chair, and dry yourself.” 

No, father, thank’ee,” said Adolphus, smoothing himself 
down with his hands. I ain’t very wet, I don’t think. Does 
my face shine much, father?” 

Well, it does look waxy, my boy,” returned Mr. Tet- 
terby. 

“ It’s the weather, father,” said Adolphus, polishing his 
cheeks on the worn sleeve of his jacket. “ What with rain, 
and sleet, and wind, and snow, and fog, my face gets quite 
brought out into a rash sometimes. And shines, it does — 
oh, don’t it, though ! ” 

Master Adolphus was also in the newspaper line of life, 
being employed, by a more thriving firm than his father and 
Co., to vend newspapers at a railway station, where his 
chubby little person, like a shabbily-disguised Cupid, and his 
shrill little voice (he was not much more than ten years old), 
were as well known as the hoarse panting of the locomotives, 
running in and out. His juvenility might have been at some 
loss for a harmless outlet, in this early application to traffic, 
but for a fortunate discovery he made of a means of enter- 
taining himself, and of dividing the long day into stages of 
interest, without neglecting business. This ingenious inven- 
tion, remarkable, like many great discoveries, for its simplicity, 
consisted in varying the first vowel in the word paper,” and 
substituting, in its stead, at different periods of the day, all 
the other vowels in grammatical succession. Thus, before 
daylight in the winter-time, he went to and fro, in his little 
oilskin cap and cape, and his big comforter, piercing the heavy 
air with his cry of ‘‘ Morn-ing Pa-per ! ” which, about an 
hour before noon, changed to ‘‘ Morn-ing Pep-per ! ” which 
at about two, changed to ‘‘ Morn-ing Pip-per ! ” which, in a 
couple of hours, changed to “ Morn-ing Pop-per ! ” and so 
declined with the sun into “ Eve-ning Pup-per ! ” to the great 
relief and comfort of this young gentleman’s spirits. 

Mrs. Tetterby, his lady-mother, who had been sitting with 
her bonnet and shawl thrown back, as aforesaid, thoughtfully 
turning her wedding-ring round and round upon her finger. 


THE HAUNTED MAN 


364 

now rose, and divesting herself of her out-of-door attire, be- 
gan to lay the cloth for supper. 

‘‘Ah, dear me, dear me, dear me!'’ said Mrs. Tetterby. 

That’s the way the world goes ! ” 

“ Which is the way the world goes, my dear ? ” asked Mr. 
Tetterby, looking round. 

“ Oh, nothing,” said Mrs. Tetterby. 

Mr. Tetterby elevated his eyebrows, folded his newspaper 
afresh, and carried his eyes up it, and down it, and across it, 
but was wandering in his attention, and not reading it. 

Mrs. Tetterby, at the same time, laid the cloth, but rather 
as if she were punishing the table than preparing the family 
supper ; hitting it unnecessarily hard with the knives and forks, 
slapping it with the plates, dinting it with the salt-cellar, and 
coming heavily down upon it with the loaf. 

“Ah, dear me, dear me, dear me!” said Mrs. Tetterby. 
“ That’s the way the world goes ! ” 

“ My duck,” returned her husband, looking round again, 
“ you said that before. Which is the way the world goes ? ” 

“Oh, nothing!” said Mrs. Tetterby. 

“ Sophia ! ” remonstrated her husband, “ you said that be- 
fore, too.” 

“ Well, I’ll say it again if you like,” returned Mrs. Tet- 
terby. “ Oh, nothing — there ! And again if you like, oh, 
nothing — there! And again if you like, oh, nothing — now 
then ! ” 

Mr. Tetterby brought his eye to bear upon the partner of 
his bosom, and said, in mild astonishment: 

“ My little woman, what has put you out ? ” 

“ I’m sure / don’t know,” she retorted. “ Don’t ask me. 
Who said I was put out at all? I never did.” 

Mr. Tetterby gave up the perusal of his newspaper as a bad 
job, and, taking a slow walk across the room, with his hands 
behind him, and his shoulders raised — his gait according per- 
fectly with the resignation of his manner — addressed himself 
to his two eldest offspring. 

“Your supper will be ready in a minute, ’Dolphus,” said 
Mr. Tetterby. “Your mother has been out in the wet, to 
the cook’s shop, to buy it. It was very good of your mother 
so to do. Y ou shall get some supper too, very soon, Johnny. 


AND THE GHOST’S BARGAIN 365 

Your mother’s pleased with you, my man, for being so at- 
tentive to your precious sister.” 

Mrs. Tetterby, without any remark, but with a decided 
subsidence of her animosity towards the table, finished her 
preparations, and took, from her ample basket, a substantial 
slab of hot pease pudding wrapped in paper, and a basin cov- 
ered with a saucer, which, on being uncovered, sent forth 
an odour so agreeable, that the three pair of eyes in the two 
beds opened wide and fixed themselves upon the banquet. 
Mr. Tetterby, without regarding his tacit invitation to be 
seated, stood repeating, slowly, “ Yes, yes, your supper will 
be ready in a minute, ’Dolphus — your mother went out in the 
wet, to the cook’s shop, to buy it. It was very good of your 
mother so to do ” — until Mrs. Tetterby, who had been ex- 
hibiting sundry tokens of contrition behind him, caught him 
round the neck, and wept. 

“ Oh, ’Dolphus ! ” said Mrs. Tetterby, how could I go and 
behave so?” 

This reconciliation affected Adolphus the younger and 
Johnny to that degree, that they both, as with one accord, 
raised a dismal cry, which had the effect of immediately shut- 
ting up the round eyes in the beds, and utterly routing the 
two remaining little Tetterby s, just then stealing in from the 
adjoining closet to see what was going on in the eating way. 

“ I am sure, ’Dolphus,” sobbed Mrs. Tetterby, “ coming 
home, I had no more idea than a child unborn — ” 

Mr. Tetterby seemed to dislike this figure of speech and 
observed, “ Say than the baby, my dear.” 

‘‘ — Had no more idea than the baby,” said Mrs. Tetterby. — 
“ Johnny, don’t look at me, but look at her, or she’ll fall out 
of your lap and be killed, and then you’ll die in agonies of a 
broken heart, and serve you right. — No more idea I hadn’t than 
that darling, of being cross when I came home ; but somehow, 
’Dolphus — ” Mrs. Tetterby paused, and again turned her wed- 
ding-ring round and round upon her finger. 

I see ! ” said Mr. Tetterby. I understand ! My little 
woman was put out. Hard times, and hard weather, and 
hard work, make it trying now and then. I see, bless your 
soul! No wonder! ’Dolf, my man,” continued Mr. Tet- 
terby, exploring the basin with a fork, ‘‘ here’s your mother 


THE HAUNTED MAN 


366 

been and bought, at the cook’s shop, besides pease pudding, 
a whole knuckle of a lovely roast leg of pork, with lots of 
crackling left upon it, and with seasoning gravy and mustard 
quite unlimited. Hand in your plate, my boy, and begin while 
it’s simmering.” 

Master Adolphus, needing no second summons, received 
his portion with eyes rendered moist by appetite, and with- 
drawing to his particular stool, fell upon his supper, tooth 
and nail. Johnny was not forgotten, but received his rations 
on bread, lest he should, in a flush of gravy, trickle any on 
the baby. He was required, for similar reasons, to keep his 
pudding, when not on active service, in his pocket. 

There might have been more pork on the knucklebone, — 
which knucklebone the carver at the cook’s shop had as- 
suredly not forgotten in carving for previous customers — ^but 
there was no stint of seasoning, and that is an accessory 
dreamily suggesting pork, and pleasantly cheating the sense 
of taste. The pease pudding, too, the gravy and mustard, 
like the Eastern rose in respect of the nightingale, if they 
were not absolutely pork, had lived near it; so, upon the 
whole, there was the flavour of a middle-sized pig. It was 
irresistible to the Tetterbys in bed, who, though professing 
to slumber peacefully, crawled out when unseen by their 
parents, and silently appealed to their brothers for any gas- 
tronomic token of fraternal affection. They, not hard of 
heart, presenting scraps in return, it resulted that a party of 
light skirmishers in night-gowns were careering about the 
parlour all through supper, which harassed Mr. Tetterby ex- 
ceedingly, and once or twice imposed upon him the necessity 
of a charge, before which these guerilla troops retired in all 
directions and in great confusion. 

Mrs. Tetterby did not enjoy her supper. There seemed 
to be something on Mrs. Tetterby ’s mind. At one time she 
laughed without reason, and at another time she cried without 
reason, and at last she laughed and cried together in a man- 
ner so very unreasonable that her husband was confounded. 

“ My little woman,” said Mr. Tetterby, “ if the world goes 
that way, it appears to go the wrong way, and to choke you.” 

Give me a drop of water,” said Mrs. Tetterby, struggling 


AND THE GHOST’S BARGAIN 367 

with herself, ‘‘ and don’t speak to me for the present, or take 
any notice of me. Don’t do it ! ” 

Mr. Tetterby having administered the water, turned sud- 
denly on the unlucky Johnny (who was full of sympathy), 
and demanded why he was wallowing there, in gluttony and 
idleness, instead of coming forward with the baby, that the 
sight of her might revive his mother. Johnny immediately 
approached, borne down by its weight; but Mrs. Tetterby 
holding out her hand to signify that she was not in a con- 
dition to bear that trying appeal to her feelings, he was in- 
terdicted from advancing another inch, on pain of perpetual 
hatred from all his dearest connections; and accordingly re- 
tired to his stool again, and crushed himself as before. 

After a pause, Mrs. Tetterby said she was better now, and 
began to laugh. 

‘‘ My little woman,” said her husband, dubiously, ‘‘ are you 
quite sure you’re better? Or are you, Sophia, about to break 
out in a fresh direction?” 

‘‘ No, ’Dolphus, no,” replied his wife. " I’m quite myself.” 
With that, settling her hair, and pressing the palms of her 
hands upon her eyes, she laughed again. 

“ What a wicked fool I was, to think so for a moment ! ” 
said Mrs. Tetterby. “ Come nearer, ’Dolphus, and let me 
ease my mind, and tell you what I mean. Let me tell you 
all about it.” 

Mr. Tetterby bringing his chair closer, Mrs. Tetterby 
laughed again, gave him a hug, and wiped her eyes. 

“ You know, ’Dolphus, my dear,” said Mrs. Tetterby, that 
when I was single, I might have given myself away in sev- 
eral directions. At one time, four after me at once; two of 
them were sons of Mars.” 

“ We’re all sons of Ma’s, my dear,” said Mr. Tetterby, 
"‘jointly with Pa’s.” 

“ I don’t mean that,” replied his wife, “ I mean soldiers — 
sergeants.” 

“Oh!” said Mr. Tetterby. 

“Well, ’Dolphus, I’m sure I never think of such things 
now, to regret them ; and I’m sure I’ve got as good a husband, 
and would do as much to prove that I was fond of him, as — ” 


THE HAUNTED MAN 


368 

‘‘As any little woman in the world,” said Mr. Tetterby. 
“ Very good. Very good.” 

If Mr. Tetterby had been ten feet high, he could not have 
expressed a gentler consideration for Mrs. Tetterby ’s fairy- 
like stature ; and if Mrs. Tetterby had been two feet high, she 
could not have felt it more appropriately her due. 

“ But you see, ’Dolphus,” said Mrs. Tetterby, “ this being 
Christmas-time, when all people who can, make holiday, and 
when all people who have got money, like to spend some, I 
did, somehow, get a little out of sorts when I was in the 
streets just now. There were so many things to be sold — 
such delicious things to eat, such fine things to look at, such 
delightful things to have — and there was so much calculating 
and calculating necessary, before I durst lay out a sixpence 
for the commonest thing; and the basket was so large, and 
wanted so much in it; and my stock of money was so small, 
and would go such a little way; — ^you hate me, don’t you, 
’Dolphus?” 

“ Not quite,” said Mr. Tetterby, “ as yet.” 

“Well! I’ll tell you the whole truth,” pursued his wife, 
penitently, “ and then perhaps you will. I felt all this, so 
much, when I was trudging about in the cold, and when I saw 
a lot of other calculating faces and large baskets trudging 
about, too, that I began to think whether I mightn’t have done 
better, and been happier, if — I — hadn’t — ” the wedding-ring 
went round again, and Mrs. Tetterby shook her downcast 
head as she turned it. 

“ I see,” said her husband quietly ; “ if you hadn’t married 
at all, or if you had married somebody else?” 

“Yes,” sobbed Mrs. Tetterby. “That’s really what I 
thought. Do you hate me now, ’Dolphus ? ” 

“ Why no,” said Mr. Tetterby, “ I don’t find that I do, as 
yet.” 

Mrs. Tetterby gave him a thankful kiss, and went on. 

“ I begin to hope you won’t, now, ’Dolphus, though I am 
afraid I haven’t told you the worst. I can’t think what came 
over me. I don’t know whether I was ill, or mad, or what I 
was, but I couldn’t call up anything that seemed to bind us to 
each other, or to reconcile me to my fortune. All the pleas- 
ures and enjoyments we had ever had — they seemed so poor 


AND THE GHOST’S BARGAIN 369 

and insignificant, I hated them. I could have trodden on 
them. And I could think of nothing else, except our being 
poor, and the number of mouths there were at home.” 

“ Well, well, my dear,” said Mr. Tetterby, shaking her hand 
encouragingly, “ that’s truth, after all. We are poor, and 
there are a number of mouths at home here.” 

“ Ah ! but, Dolf, Dolf ! ” cried his wife, laying her hands 
upon his neck, “ my good, kind, patient fellow, when I had 
been at home a very little while — how different ! Oh, Dolf, 
dear, how different it was ! I felt as if there was a rush of 
recollection on me, all at once, that softened my hard heart, 
and filled it up till it was bursting. All our struggles for a 
livelihood, all our cares and wants since we have been mar- 
ried, all the times of sickness, all the hours of watching, we 
have ever had, by one another, or by the children, seemed to 
speak to me, and say that they had made us one, and that 
I never might have been, or could have been, or would have 
been, any other than the wife and mother I am. Then, the 
cheap enjoyments that I could have trodden on so cruelly, got 
to be so precious to me — Oh, so priceless, and dear! — that I 
couldn’t bear to think how much I had wronged them; and 
I said, and say again a hundred times, how could I ever behave 
so, ’Dolphus, how could I ever have the heart to do it ! ” 

The good woman, quite carried away by her honest tender- 
ness and remorse, was weeping with all her heart, when she 
started up with a scream, and ran behind her husband. Her 
cry was so terrified, that the children started from their sleep 
and from their beds, and clung about her. Nor did her gaze 
belie her voice, as she pointed to a pale man in a black cloak 
who had come into the room. 

Look at that man ! Look there 1 What does he want ? ” 
“ My dear,” returned her husband, ‘‘ I’ll ask him if you’ll let 
me go. What’s the matter? How you shake! ” 

“ I saw him in the street, when I was out just now. He 
looked at me, and stood near me. I am afraid of him.” 

'' Afraid of him ! Why ? ” 

“ I don’t know why — I — stop ! husband ! ” for he was go- 
ing towards the stranger. 

She had one hand pressed upon her forehead, and one upon 
her breast; and there was a peculiar fluttering all over her, 


370 THE HAUNTED MAN 

and a hurried unsteady motion of her eyes, as if she had lost 
something. 

“ Are you ill, my dear ? 

What is it that is going from me again ? ’’ she muttered, 
in a low voice. “ What is this that is going away? ” 

Then she abruptly answered: “ 111? No, I am quite well,” 
and stood looking vacantly at the floor. 

Her husband, who had not been altogether free from the 
infection of her fear at first, and whom the present strange- 
ness of her manner did not tend to reassure, addressed himself 
to the pale visitor in the black cloak, who stood still, and 
whose eyes were bent upon the ground. 

‘‘What may be your pleasure. Sir,” he asked, “with us?” 

“ I fear that my coming in unperceived,” returned the 
visitor, “ has alarmed you ; but you were talking and did not 
hear me.” 

“ My little woman says — perhaps you heard her say it,” 
returned Mr. Tetterby, “ that it’s not the first time you have 
alarmed her to-night.” 

“ I am sorry for it. I remember to have observed her, for 
a few moments only, in the street. I had no intention of 
frightening her.” 

As he raised his eyes in speaking, she raised hers. It was 
extraordinary to see what dread she had of him, and with 
what dread he observed it — and yet how narrowly and closely. 

“ My name,” he said, “ is Redlaw. I come from the old 
college hard by. A young gentleman who is a student there, 
lodges in your house, does he not ? ” 

“ Mr. Denham?” said Tetterby. 

“ Yes.” 

It was a natural action, and so slight as to be hardly notice- 
able; but the little man, before speaking again, passed his 
hand across his forehead, and looked quickly around the room, 
as though he were sensible of some change in its atmosphere. 
The Chemist, instantly transferring to him the look of dread 
he had directed towards the wife, stepped back, and his face 
turned paler. 

“ The gentleman’s room,” said Tetterby, “ is upstairs. Sir. 
There’s a more convenient private entrance; but as you have 
come in here, it will save you going out into the cold, if you’ll 


AND THE GHOST’S BARGAIN 371 

take this little staircase,” showing one communicating directly 
with the parlour, “ and go up to him that way, if you wish to 
see him.” 

“ Yes, I wish to see him,” said the Chemist. “ Can you 
spare a light ? ” 

The watchfulness of his haggard look, and the inexplicable 
distrust that darkened it, seemed to trouble Mr. Tetterby. He 
paused; and looking fixedly at him in return, stood for a 
minute or so, like a man stupefied, or fascinated. 

At length he said, “ I’ll light you. Sir, if you’ll follow 
me.” 

No,” replied the Chemist, “ I don’t wish to be attended, or 
announced to him. He does not expect me. I would rather 
go alone. Please to give me the light, if you can spare it, 
and I’ll find the way.” 

In the quickness of his expression of this desire, and in tak- 
ing the candle from the newsman, he touched him on the 
breast. Withdrawing his hand hastily, almost as though he 
had wounded him by accident (for he did not know in what 
part of himself his new power resided, or how it was com- 
municated, or how the manner of its reception varied in 
different persons), he turned and ascended the stair. 

But when he reached the top, he stopped and looked down. 
The wife was standing in the same place, twisting her ring 
round and round upon her finger. The husband, with his 
head bent forward on his breast, was musing heavily and 
sullenly. The children, still' clustering about the mother, 
gazed timidly after the visitor, and nestled together when they 
saw him looking down. 

Come ! ” said the father, roughly. “ There’s enough of 
this. Get to bed here ! ” 

The place is inconvenient and small enough,” the mother 
added, ‘‘ without you. Get to bed ! ” 

The whole brood, scared and sad, crept away; little Johnny 
and the baby lagging last. The mother, glancing con- 
temptuously round the sordid room, and tossing from her the 
fragments of their meal, stopped on the threshold of her task 
of clearing the table, and sat down, pondering idly and de- 
jectedly. The father betook himself to the chimney-corner, 
and impatiently raking the small fire together, bent over it as 


372 THE HAUNTED MAN 

if he would monopolise it all. They did not interchange a 
word. 

The Chemist, paler than before, stole upward like a thief ; 
looking back upon the change below, and dreading equally to 
go on or return. 

“ What have I done ! he said, confusedly. ‘‘ What am I 
going to do ! ’’ 

“ To be the benefactor of mankind,” he thought he heard a 
voice reply. 

He looked round, but there was nothing there; and a 
passage now shutting out the little parlour from his view, he 
went on, directing his eyes before him at the way he went. 

“ It is only since last night,” he muttered gloomily, “ that I 
have remained shut up, and yet all things are strange to me. 
I am strange to myself. I am here, as in a dream. What 
interest have I in this place, or in any place that I can bring 
to my remembrance ? My mind is going blind ! ” 

There was a door before him, and he knocked at it. Being 
invited, by a voice within, to enter, he complied. 

“ Is that my kind nurse ? ” ^aid the voice. “ But I need not 
ask her. There is no one else to come here.” 

It spoke cheerfully, though in a languid tone, and attracted 
his attention to a young man lying on a couch, drawn before 
the chimney-piece, with the back towards the door. A meagre 
scanty stove, pinched and hollowed like a sick man’s cheeks, 
and bricked into the centre of a hearth that it could scarcely 
warm, contained the fire, to which his face was turned. Being 
so near the windy house-top, it wasted quickly, and with a busy 
sound, and the burning ashes dropped down fast. 

“ They chink when they shoot out here,” said the student, 
smiling, “ so, according to the gossips, they are not coffins, 
but purses. I shall be well and rich yet, some day, if it please 
God, and shall live perhaps to love a daughter Milly, in re- 
membrance of the kindest nature and the gentlest heart in the 
world.” 

He put up his hand as if expecting her to take it, but, 
being weakened, he lay still, with his face resting on his other 
hand, and did not turn round. 

The Chemist glanced about the room; — at the student’s 
books and papers, piled upon a table in a corner, where they, 


AND THE GHOST’S BARGAIN 373 

and his extinguished reading-lamp, now prohibited and put 
away, told of the attentive hours that had gone before this 
illness, and perhaps caused it ; — at such signs of his old health 
and freedom, as the out-of-door attire that hung idle on the 
wall ; — at those remembrances of other and less solitary scenes, 
the little miniatures upon the chimney-piece, and the drawing 
of home; — at that token of his emulation, perhaps, in some 
sort, of his personal attachment too, the framed engraving of 
himself, the looker-on. The time had been, only yesterday, 
when not one of these objects, in its remotest association of 
interest with the living figure before him, would have been 
lost on Redlaw. Now, they were but objects; or, if any gleam 
of such connection shot upon him, it perplexed, and not en- 
lightened him, as he stood looking round with a dull wonder. 

The student, recalling the thin hand which had remained 
so long untouched, raised himself on the couch, and turned 
his head. 

“ Mr. Redlaw ! ” he exclaimed, and started up. 

Redlaw put out his arm. 

“ Don’t come nearer to me. I will sit here. Remain you, 
where you are ! ” 

He sat down on a chair near the door, and having glanced 
at the young man standing leaning with his hand upon the 
couch, spoke with his eyes averted towards the ground. 

“ I heard, by an accident, by what accident is no matter, 
that one of my class was ill and solitary. I received no other 
description of him, than that he lived in this street. Begin- 
ning my inquiries at the first house in it, I have found him.” 

“ I have been ill, Sir,” returned the student, not merely with 
a modest hesitation, but with a kind of awe of him, “ but am 
greatly better. An attack of fever — of the brain, I believe — 
has weakened me, but I am much better. I cannot say I have 
been solitary, in my illness, or I should forget the ministering 
hand that has been near me.” 

You are speaking of the keeper’s wife/’ said Redlaw. 

“ Yes.” The student bent his head, as if he rendered her 
some silent homage. 

The Chemist, irf whom there was a cold, monotonous 
apathy, which rendered him more like a marble image on the 
tomb of the man who had started from his dinner yesterday 


THE HAUNTED MAN 


374 

at the first mention of this student’s case, than the breathing 
man himself, glanced again at the student leaning with his 
hand upon the couch, and looked upon the ground, and in the 
air, as if for light for his blinded mind. 

“ I remembered your name,” he said, when it was men- 
tioned to me downstairs, just now; and I recollect your face. 
We have held but very little personal communication to- 
gether ? ” 

Very little.” 

“ You have retired and withdrawn from me, more than any 
of the rest, I think ? ” 

The student signified assent. 

“And why?” said the Chemist; not with the least expres- 
sion of interest, but with a moody, wayward kind of curiosity. 
“ Why ? How comes it that you have sought to keep espe- 
cially from me, the knowledge of your remaining here, at this 
season, when all the rest have dispersed, and of your being ill ? 
I want to know why this is ? ” 

The young man, who had heard him with increasing agita- 
tion, raised his downcast eyes to his face, and clasping his 
hands together, cried with sudden earnestness and with trem- 
bling lips : 

“ Mr. Redlaw ! You have discovered me. You know my 
secret ! ” 

“ Secret ? ” said the Chemist, harshly. “ I know ? ” 

“ Yes ! Your manner, so different from the interest and 
sympathy which endear you to so many hearts, your altered 
voice, the constraint there is in everything you say, and in 
your looks,” replied the student, “ warn me that you know me. 
That you would conceal it, even now, is but a proof to me 
(God knows I need none!) of your natural kindness, and of 
the bar there is between us.” 

A vacant and contemptuous laugh, was all his answer. 

“ But, Mr. Redlaw,” said the student, “ as a just man, and 
a good man, think how innocent I am, except in name and 
descent, of participation in any wrong inflicted on you, or in 
any sorrow you have borne.” 

“Sorrow!” said Redlaw, laughing. “Wrong! What are 
those to me ? ” 

“ F or Heaven’s sake,” entreated the shrinking student, “ do 


AND THE GHOSPS BARGAIN 


375 

not let the mere interchange of a few words with me change 
you like this, Sir! Let me pass again from your knowledge 
and notice. Let me occupy my old reserved and distant place 
among those whom you instruct. Know me only by the name 
I have assumed, and not by that of Longford — ’’ 

“ Longford ! ’’ exclaimed the other. 

He clasped his head with both his hands, and for a moment 
turned upon the young man his own intelligent and thoughtful 
face. But the light passed from it, like the sunbeam of an 
instant, and it clouded as before. 

“ The name my mother bears. Sir,’’ faltered the young man, 
“ the name she took, when she might, perhaps, have taken one 
more honoured. Mr. Redlaw,” hesitating, “ I believe I know 
that history. Where my information halts, my guesses at 
what is wanting may supply something not remote from the 
truth. I am the child of a marriage that has not proved itself 
a well-assorted or a happy one. From infancy, I have heard 
you spoken of with honour and respect — with something that 
was almost reverence. I have heard of such devotion, of such 
fortitude and tenderness, of such rising up against the obstacles 
which press men down, that my fancy, since I learnt my little 
lesson from my mother, has shed a lustre on your name. At 
last, a poor student myself, from whom could I learn but 
you ? ” 

Redlaw, unmoved, unchanged, and looking at him with a 
staring frown, answered by no word or sign. 

“ I cannot say,” pursued the other, “ I should try in vain 
to say, how much it has impressed me, and affected me, to 
find the gracious traces of the past, in that certain power of 
winning gratitude and confidence which is associated among 
us students (among the humblest of us, most) with Mr. Red- 
law’s generous name. Our ages and positions are so different, 
Sir, and I am so accustomed to regard you from a distance, 
that I wonder at my own presumption when I touch, however 
lightly, on that theme. But to one who — I may say, who felt 
no common interest in my mother once — it may be something 
to hear, now that all is past, with what indescribable feelings 
of affection I have, in my obscurity, regarded him ; with what 
pain and reluctance I have kept aloof from his encouragement, 
when a word of it would have made me rich ; yet how I have 


THE HAUNTED MAN 


376 

felt it fit that I should hold my course, content to know him, 
and to be unknown. Mr. Redlaw,” said the student, faintly, 
what I would have said, I have said ill, for my strength is 
strange to me as yet ; but for anything unworthy in this fraud 
of mine, forgive me, and for all the rest forget me ! ” 

The staring frown remained on Redlaw’s face, and yielded 
to no other expression until the student, with these words, 
advanced towards him, as if to touch his hand, when he drew 
back and cried to him : 

“ Don’t come nearer to me ! ” 

The young man stopped, shocked by the eagerness of his 
recoil, and by the sternness of his repulsion ; and he passed his 
hand, thoughtfully, across his forehead. 

“ The past is past,” said the Chemist. It dies like the 
brutes. Who talks to me of its traces in my life? He raves 
or lies! What have I to do with your distempered dreams? 
If you want money, here it is. I came to offer it ; and that is 
all I came for. There can be nothing else that brings me 
here,” he muttered, holding his head again, with both his 
hands. “ There can be nothing else, and yet — ” 

He had tossed his purse upon the table. As he fell into 
this dim cogitation with himself, the student took it up, and 
held it out to him. 

‘‘ Take it back, Sir,” he said proudly, though not angrily. 
‘‘ I wish you could take from me, with it, the remembrance of 
your words and offer.” 

'‘You do?” he retorted, with a wild light in his eyes. 
"You do?” 

"I do!” 

The Chemist went close to him, for the first time, and took 
the purse, and turned him by the arm, and looked him in the 
face. 

" There is sorrow and trouble in sickness, is there not ? ” 
he demanded, with a laugh. 

The wondering student answered, " Yes.” 

" In its unrest, in its anxiety, in its suspense, in all its train 
of physical and mental miseries?” said the Chemist, with a 
wild unearthly exultation. " All best forgotten, are they 
not?” 

The student did not answer, but again passed his hand, con- 


AND THE GHOST’S BARGAIN 377 

fusedly, . across his forehead. Redlaw still held him by the 
sleeve, when Milly’s voice was heard outside. 

I can see very well now,” she said, thank you, Dolf. 
Don’t cry, dear. Father and mother will be comfortable 
again, to-morrow, and home will be comfortable too. A 
gentleman with him, is there ! ” 

Redlaw released his hold, as he listened. 

'' I have feared, from the first moment,” he murmured to 
himself, to meet her. There is a steady quality of good- 
ness in her, that I dread to influence. I may be the murderer 
of what is tenderest and best within her bosom.” 

She was knocking at the door. 

“ Shall I dismiss it as an idle foreboding, or still avoid 
her ? ” he muttered, looking uneasily around. 

She was knocking at the door again. 

‘'Of all the visitors who come here,” he said, in a hoarse 
alarmed voice, turning to his companion, “ this is the one I 
should desire most to avoid. Hide me ! ” 

The student opened a frail door in the wall, communica- 
ting, where the garret-roof began to slope towards the floor, 
with a small inner room. Redlaw passed in hastily, and shut 
it after him. 

The student then resumed his place upon the couch, and 
called to her to enter. 

“ Dear Mr. Edmund,” said Milly, looking round, “ they 
told me there was a gentleman here.” 

“ There is no one here but I.” 

“There has been some one?” 

“ Yes, yes, there has been some one.” 

She put her little basket on the table, and went up to the 
back of the couch, as if to take the extended hand — but it 
was not there. A little surprised, in her quiet way, she leaned 
over to look at his face, and gently touched him on the brow. 

“ Are you quite as well to-night? Your head is not so Cool 
as in the afternoon.” 

“ Tut ! ” said the student, petulantly, “ very little ails me.” 

A little more surprise, but no reproach, was expressed in 
her face, as she withdrew to the other side of the table, and 
took a small packet of needlework from her basket. But she 
laid it down again, on second thoughts, and going noiselessly 


THE HAUNTED MAN 


378 

about the room, set everything exactly in its place, and in the 
neatest order; even to the cushions on the couch, which she 
touched with so light a hand, that he hardly seemed to know 
it, as he lay looking at the fire. When all this was done, and 
she had swept the hearth, she sat down, in her modest little 
bonnet, to her work, and was quietly busy on it directly. 

“ It’s the new muslin curtain for the window, Mr. Ed- 
mund,” said Milly, stitching away as she talked. It will 
look very clean and nice, though it costs very little, and will 
save your eyes, too, from the light. My William says the 
room should not be too light just now, when you are recover- 
ing or well, or the glare might make you giddy.” 

He said nothing; but there was something so fretful and 
impatient in his change of position, that her quick fingers 
stopped, and she looked at him anxiously. 

“ The pillows are not comfortable,” she said, laying down 
her work and rising. “ I will soon put them right.” 

They are very well,” he answered. “ Leave them alone, 
pray. You make so much of everything.” 

He raised his head to say this, and looked at her so thank- 
lessly, that, after he had thrown himself down again, she stood 
timidly pausing. However, she resumed her seat, and her 
needle, without having directed even a murmuring look to- 
wards him, and was soon as busy as before. 

” I have been thinking, Mr. Edmund, that you have been 
often thinking of late, when I have been sitting by, how 
true the saying is, that adversity is a good teacher. Health 
will be more precious to you, after this illness, than it has 
ever been. And years hence, when this time of year comes 
round, and you remember the days when you lay here sick, 
alone, that the knowledge of your illness might not afflict 
those who are dearest to you, your home will be doubly dear 
and doubly blest. Now, isn’t that a good, true thing?” 

She was too intent upon her work, and too earnest in what 
she said, and too composed and quiet altogether, ^o be on the 
watch for any look he might direct towards her in reply; so 
the shaft of his ungrateful glance fell harmless, and did not 
wound her. 

“ Ah ! ” said Milly, with her pretty head inclining thought- 
fully on one side, as she looked down, following her busy 


AND THE GHOST’S BARGAIN 379 

fingers with her eyes. Even on me — and I am very different 
from you, Mr. Edmund, for I have no learning, and don’t know 
how to think properly — this view of such things has made a 
great impression, since you have been lying ill. When I have 
seen you so touched by the kindness and attention of the poor 
people downstairs, I have felt that you thought even that 
experience some repayment for the loss of health, and I have 
read in your face, as plain as if it was a book, that tut for 
some trouble and sorrow we should never know half the good 
there is about us.” 

His getting up from the couch, interrupted her, or she was 
going on to say more. 

‘‘ We needn’t magnify the merit, Mrs. William,” he re- 
joined slightingly. “ The people downstairs will be paid in 
good time I dare say, for any little extra service they may 
have rendered me; and perhaps they anticipate no less. I am 
much obliged to you, too.” 

Her fingers stopped, and she looked at him. 

I can’t be made to feel the more obliged by your exag- 
gerating the case,” he said. I am sensible that you have 
been interested in me, and I say I am much obliged to you. 
What more would you have ? ” 

Her work fell on her lap, as she still looked at him walk- 
ing to and fro with an intolerant air, and stopping now and 
then. 

I say again, I am much obliged to you. Why weaken my 
sense of what is your due in obligation, by preferring enor- 
mous claims upon me? Trouble, sorrow, affliction, adversity! 
One might suppose I had been dying a score of deaths here ! ” 

Do you believe, Mr. Edmund,” she asked, rising and go- 
ing nearer to him, “ that I spoke of the poor people of the 
house, with any reference to myself? To me?” laying her 
hand upon her bosom with a simple and innocent smile of 
astonishment. 

Oh ! I think nothing about it, my good creature,” he re- 
turned. “ I have had an indisposition, which your solicitude — 
observe! I say solicitude — makes a great deal more of, than 
it merits ; and it’s over, and we can’t perpetuate it.” 

He coldly took a book, and sat down at the table. 

She watched him for a little while, until her smile was quite 


38 o the haunted MAN 

gone, and then, returning to where her basket was, said 
gently : 

“ Mr. Edmund, would you rather be alone ? '' 

There is no reason why I should detain you here,” he 
replied. 

“ Except — ” said Milly, hesitating, and showing her work. 

Oh ! the curtain,” he answered, with a supercilious laugh. 
“ That's not worth staying for.” 

She made up the little packet again, and put it in her basket. 
Then, standing before him with such an air of patient entreaty 
that he could not choose but look at her, she said : 

“If you should want me, I will come back willingly. When 
you did want me, I was quite happy to come; there was no 
merit in it. I think you must be afraid, that, now you are 
getting well, I may be troublesome to you; but I should not 
have been, indeed. I should have come no longer than your 
weakness and confinement lasted. You owe me nothing; but 
it is right that you should deal as justly by me as if I was a 
lady — even the very lady that you love ; and if you 'suspect me 
of meanly making much of the little I have tried to do to 
comfort your sick room, you do yourself more wrong than 
ever you can do me. That is why I am sorry. That is why 
I am very sorry.” 

If she had been as passionate as she was quiet, as indignant 
as she was calm, as angry in her look as she was gentle, as 
loud of tone as she was low and clear^ she might have left 
no sense of her departure in the room, compared with that 
which fell upon the lonely student when she went away. 

He was gazing drearily upon the place where she had been, 
when Redlaw came out of his concealment, and came to the 
door. 

“ When sickness lays its hand on you again,” he said, look- 
ing fiercely back at him, “ — may it be soon ! — Die here ! Rot 
here ! ” 

“ What have you done ? ” returned the other, catching at his 
'cloak. “What change have you wrought in me? What 
curse have you brought upon me ? Give me back myself ! ” 

“ Give me back myself ! ” exclaimed Redlaw like a madman. 
“ I am infected ! I am infectious ! I am charged with poison 
for my own mind, and the minds of all mankind. Where I 


AND THE GHOST’S BARGAIN 381 

felt interest, compassion, sympathy, I am turning into stone. 
Selfishness and ingratitude spring up in my blighting foot- 
steps. I am only so much less base than the wretches whom I 
make so, that in the moment of their transformation I can 
hate them.’’ 

As he spoke — ^the young man still holding to his cloak — he 
cast him off, and struck him: then, wildly hurried out into 
the night air where the wind was blowing, the snow falling, 
the cloud-drift sweeping on, the moon dimly shining; and 
where, blowing in the wind, falling with the snow, drifting 
with the clouds, shining in the moonlight, and heavily looming 
in the darkness, were the Phantom’s words, “ The gift that I 
have given, you shall give again, go where you will ! ” 

Whither he went, he neither knew nor cared, so that he 
avoided company. The change he felt within him made the 
busy streets a desert, and himself a desert, and the multitude 
around him, in their manifold endurances and ways of life, a 
mighty waste of sand, which the winds tossed into unintelligi- 
ble heaps and made a ruinous confusion of. Those traces in 
his breast which the Phantom had told him would “ die out 
soon,” were not, as yet, so far upon their way to death, but 
that he understood enough of what he was, and what he made 
of others, to desire to be alone. 

This put it in his mind — he suddenly bethought himself, as 
he was going along, of the boy who had rushed into his room. 
And then he recollected, that of those with whom he had 
communicated since the Phantom’s disappearance, that boy 
alone had shown no sign of being changed. 

Monstrous and odious as the wild thing was to him, he 
determined to seek it out, and prove if this were really so; 
and also to seek it with another intention, which came into 
his thoughts at the same time. 

So, resolving with some difficulty where he was, he directed 
his steps back to the old college, and to that part of it where 
the general porch was, and where, alone, the pavement was 
worn by the tread of the students’ feet. 

The keeper’s house stood just within the iron gates, form- 
ing a part of the chief quadrangle. There was a little cloister 
outside, and from that sheltered place he knew he could look 
in at the window of their ordinary room, and see who was 


THE HAUNTED MAN 


382 

within. The iron gates were shut, but his hand was familiar 
with the fastening, and drawing it back by thrusting in his 
wrist between the bars, he passed through softly, shut it again, 
and crept up to the window, crumbling the thin crust of 
snow with his feet. 

The fire, to which he had directed the boy last night, shin- 
ing brightly through the glass, made an illuminated place upon 
the ground. Instinctively avoiding this, and going round it, 
he looked in at the window. At first, he thought that there 
was no one there, and that the blaze was reddening only the 
old beams in the ceiling and the dark walls; but peering in 
more narrowly he saw the object of his search coiled asleep 
before it on the floor. He passed quickly to the door, opened 
it, and went in. 

The creature lay in such a fiery heat, that, as the Chemist 
stooped to rouse him, it scorched his head. So soon as he 
was touched, the boy, not half awake, clutching his rags to- 
gether with the instinct of flight upon him, half rolled and half 
ran into a distant corner of the room, where, heaped upon 
the ground, he struck his foot out to defend himself. 

“Get up!” said the Chemist. “You have not forgotten 
me ? ” 

“ You let me alone ! ” returned the boy. “ This is the 
woman’s house — not yours.” 

The Chemist’s steady eye controlled him somewhat, or in- 
spired him with enough submission to be raised upon his 
feet and looked at. 

“ Who washed them, and put those bandages where they 
were bruised and cracked ? ” asked the Chemist, pointing to 
their altered state. 

“ The woman did.” 

“ And is it she who has made you cleaner in the face, too? ” 

“ Yes, the woman.” 

Redlaw asked these questions to attract his eyes towards 
himself, and with the same intent now held him by the chin, 
and threw his wild hair back, though he loathed to touch him. 
The boy watched his eyes keenly, as if he thought it needful to 
his own defence, not knowing what he might do next; and 
Redlaw could see well that no change came over him. 

“Where are they?” he inquired. 


AND THE GHOST’S BARGAIN 383 

** The woman’s out.” 

“ I know she is. Where is the old man with the white hair, 
and his son ? ” 

“ The woman’s husband, d’ye mean ? ” inquired the boy. 

Ay. Where are those two ? ” 

“ Out. Something’s the matter, somewhere. They were 
fetched out in a hurry, and told me to stop here.” 

Come with me,” said the Chemist, and I’ll give you 
money.” 

“ Come where ? and how much will you give ? ” 

“ I’ll give you more shillings than you ever saw, and bring 
you back soon. Do you know your way to where you came 
from ? ” 

‘‘ You let me go,” returned the boy, suddenly twisting out of 
his grasp. '' I’m not a-going to take you there. Let me be, 
or I’ll heave some fire at you ! ” 

He was down before it, and ready, with his savage little 
hand, to pluck the burning coals out. 

What the Chemist had felt, in observing the effect of his 
charmed influence stealing over those with whom he came in 
contact, was not nearly equal to the cold vague terror with 
which he saw this baby-monster put it at defiance. It chilled 
his blood to look on the immovable impenetrable thing, in the 
likeness of a child, with its sharp malignant face turned up to 
his, and its almost infant hand, ready at the bars. 

“ Listen, boy ! ” he said. “ You shall take me where you 
please, so that you take me where the people are very miserable 
or very wicked. I want to do them good, and not to harm 
them. You shall have money, as I have told you, and I will 
bring you back. Get up ! Come quickly ! ” He made a hasty 
step towards the door, afraid of her returning. 

Will you let me walk by myself, and never hold me, nor 
yet touch me ? ” said the boy, slowly withdrawing the hand 
with which he threatened, and beginning to get up. 

“I will!” 

And let me go before, behind, or anyways I like ? ” 
will!” 

Give me some money first then, and I’ll go.” 

The Chemist laid a few shillings, one by one, in his ex- 
tended hand. To count them was beyond the boy’s knowl- 


THE HAUNTED MAN 


384 

edge, but he said “ one,” every time, and avariciously looked 
at each as it was given, and at the donor. He had nowhere 
to put them, out of his hand, but in his mouth ; and he put them 
there. 

Redlaw then wrote with his pencil on a leaf of his pocket- 
book, that the boy was with him; and laying it on the table, 
signed to him to follow. Keeping his rags together, as usual, 
the boy complied, and went out with his bare head and his 
naked feet into the winter night. 

Preferring not to depart by the iron gate by which he had 
entered, where they were in danger of meeting her whom he 
so anxiously avoided, the Chemist led the way, through some 
of those passages among which the boy had lost himself, and 
by that portion of the building where he lived, to a small door 
of which he had the key. When they got into the street, he 
stopped to ask his guide — who instantly retreated from him — 
if he knew where they were. 

The savage thing looked here and there, and at length, 
nodding his head, pointed in the direction he designed to take. 
Redlaw going on at once, he followed, something less suspi- 
ciously ; shifting his money from his mouth into his hand, and 
back again into his mouth, and stealthily rubbing it bright 
upon his shreds of dress, as he went along. 

Three times, in their progress, they were side by side. Three 
times they stopped, being side by side. Three times the 
Chemist glanced down at his face, and shuddered as it forced 
upon him one reflection. 

The first occasion was when they were crossing an old 
church-yard, and Redlaw stopped among the graves, utterly 
at a loss how to connect them with any tender, softening, or 
consolatory thought. 

The second was, when the breaking forth of the moon in- 
duced him to look up at the Heavens, where he saw her in 
her glory, surrounded by a host of stars he still knew by the 
names and histories which human science has appended to 
them ; but where he saw nothing else he had been wont to see, 
felt nothing he had been wont to feel, in looking up there, on a 
bright night. 

The third was when he stopped to listen to a plaintive strain 
of music, but could only hear a tune, made manifest to him by 


AND THE GHOST’S BARGAIN 385 

the dry mechanism of the instruments and his own ears, 
with no address to any mystery within him, without a whis- 
per in it of the past, or of the future, powerless upon him as 
the sound of last year’s running water, or the rushing of last 
year’s wind. 

At each of these three times, he saw with horror that, in spite 
of the vast intellectual distance between them, and their being 
unlike each other in all physical respects, the expression on 
the boy’s face was the expression on his own. 

They journeyed on for some time — now through such 
crowded places, that he often looked over his shoulder think- 
ing he had lost his guide, but generally finding him within his 
shadow on his other side ; now by ways so quiet, that he could 
have counted his short, quick, naked footsteps coming on be- 
hind — until they arrived at a ruinous collection of houses, and 
the boy touched him and stopped. 

In there ! ” he said, pointing out one house where 
there were scattered lights in the windows, and a dim lantern 
in the doorway, with Lodgings for Travellers ” painted on 
it. 

Redlaw looked about him; from the houses, to the waste 
piece of ground on which the houses stood, or rather did not 
altogether tumble down, unfenced, undrained, unlighted, and 
bordered by a sluggish ditch; from that, to the sloping line 
of arches, part of some neighbouring viaduct or bridge with 
which it was surrounded, and which lessened gradually, to- 
wards them, until the last but one was a mere kennel for a 
dog, the last a plundered little heap of bricks; from that, to 
the child, close to him, cowering and trembling with the cold, 
and limping on one little foot, while he coiled the other round 
his leg to warm it, yet staring at all these things with that 
frightful likeness of expression so apparent in his face, that 
Redlaw started from him. 

In there ! ” said the boy, pointing out the house again. 
‘‘ I’ll wait.” 

“Will they let me in?” asked Redlaw. 

“ Say you’re a doctor,” he answered with a nod. “ There’s 
plenty ill here.” 

Looking back on his way to the house-door, Redlaw saw 
him trail himself upon the dust and crawl within the shelter 


THE HAUNTED MAN 


386 

of the smallest arch, as if he were a rat. He had no pity 
for the thing, but he was afraid of it ; and when it looked out 
of its den at him, he hurried to the house as a retreat. 

‘‘ Sorrow, wrong, and trouble,” said the Chemist, with a 
painful effort at some more distinct remembrance, “ at least 
haunt this place, darkly. He can do no harm, who brings 
forgetfulness of such things here ! ” 

With these words, he pushed the yielding door, and went 
in. 

There was a woman sitting on the stairs, either asleep 
or forlorn, whose head was bent down on her hands and 
knees. As it was not easy to pass without treading on her, 
and as she was perfectly regardless of his near approach, 
he stopped, and touched her on the shoulder. Looking up, 
she showed him quite a young face, but one whose bloom 
and promise were all swept away, as if the haggard winter 
should unnaturally kill the spring. 

With little or no show of concern on his account, she 
moved nearer to the wall to leave him a wider passage. 

“ What are you ? ” said Redlaw, pausing, with his hand 
upon the broken stair-rail. 

“ What do you think I am ? ” she answered, showing him 
her face again. 

He looked upon the ruined Temple of God, so lately made, 
so soon disfigured; and something, which was not compassion 
— for the springs in which a true compassion for such mis- 
eries has its rise, were dried up in his breast — but which was 
nearer to it, for the moment, than any feeling that had lately 
struggled into the darkening, but not yet wholly darkened, 
night of his mind — mingled a touch of softness with his next 
words. 

I am come here to give relief, if I can,” he said. “ Are 
you thinking of any wrong?” 

She frowned at him, and then laughed; and then her laugh 
prolonged itself into a shivering sigh, as she dropped her 
head again, and hid her fingers in her hair. 

Are you thinking of a wrong?” he asked once more. 

“ I am thinking of my life,” she said, with a momentary 
look at him. 

He had a perception that she was one of many, and that 


AND THE GHOST’S BARGAIN 387 

he saw the type of thousands, when he saw her, drooping 
at his feet. 

“ What are your parents ? ” he demanded. 

“ I had a good home once. My father was a gardener, 
far away, in the country.’’ 

“ Is he dead? ” 

“ He’s dead to me. All such things are dead to me. You 
a gentleman, and not know that ! ” She raised her eyes again, 
and laughed at him. 

“ Girl ! ” said Redlaw, sternly, '' before this death, of all 
such things, was brought about, was there no wrong done to 
you? In spite of all that you do, does no remembrance of 
wrong cleave to you? Are there not times upon times when 
it is misery to you ? ” 

So little of what was womanly was left in her appearance, 
that now, when she burst into tears, he stood amazed. But 
he was more amazed, and much disquieted, to note that in 
her awakened recollection of this wrong, the first trace of 
her old humanity and frozen tenderness appeared to show 
itself. 

He drew a little off, and in doing so, observed that her arms 
were black, her face cut, and her bosom bruised. 

“What brutal hand has hurt you so?” he asked. 

“ My own. I did it myself ! ” she answered quickly. 

“ It is impossible.” 

“ I’ll swear I did ! He didn’t touch me. I did it to mv- 
self in a passion, and threw myself down here. He wasn’t 
near me. He never laid a hand upon me ! ” 

In the white determination of her face, confronting him 
with this untruth, he saw enough of the last perversion and 
distortion of good surviving in that miserable breast, to be 
stricken with remorse that he had ever come near her. 

“ Sorrow, wrong, and trouble ! ” he muttered, turning his 
fearful gaze away. “ All that connect her with the state from 
which she has fallen, has those roots! In the name of God, 
let me go by ! ” 

Afraid to look at her again, afraid to touch her, afraid 
to think of having sounded the last thread by which she 
held upon the mercy of Heaven, he gathered his cloak about 
him, and glided swiftly up the stairs. 


THE HAUNTED MAN 


388 

Opposite to him, on the landing, was a door, which stood 
partly open, and which, as he ascended, a man with a candle 
in his hand, came forward from within to shut. But this man, 
on seeing him, drew back, with much emotion in his manner, 
and, as if by a sudden impulse, mentioned his name aloud. 

In the surprise of such recognition there, he stopped, en- 
deavouring to recollect the wan and startled face. He had no 
time to consider it, for, to his yet greater amazement, old 
Philip came out of the room, and took him by the hand. 

“ Mr. Redlaw,’’ said the old man, “ this is like you, this 
is like you, Sir ! you have heard of it, and have come after us 
to render any help you can. Ah, too late, too late ! ’’ 

Redlaw, with a bewildered look, submitted to be led into 
the room. A man lay there, on a truckle-bed, and William 
Swidger stood at the bedside. 

Too late ! ” murmured the old man, looking wistfully into 
the Chemist’s face; and the tears stole down his cheeks. 

“ That’s what I say, father,” interposed his son in a low 
voice. “ That’s where it is, exactly. To keep as quiet as 
ever we can while he’s a-dozing, is the only thing to do. 
You’re right, father!” 

Redlaw paused at the bedside, and looked down on the 
figure that was stretched upon the mattress. It was that of 
a man, who should have been in the vigour of his life, but 
on whom it was not likely the sun would ever shine again. 
The vices of his forty or fifty years’ career had so branded 
him, that, in comparison with their effects upon his face, the 
heavy hand of Time upon the old man’s face who watched him 
had been merciful and beautifying. 

‘‘ Who is this ? ” asked the Chemist, looking round. 

‘‘ My son George, Mr. Redlaw,” said the old man, wringing 
his hands. “ My eldest son, George, who was more his moth- 
er’s pride than all the rest I ” 

Redlaw’s eyes wandered from the old man’s grey head, as 
he laid it down upon the bed, to the person who had recog- 
nised him, and who had kept aloof, in the remotest corner of 
the room. He seemed to be about his own age ; and although 
he knew no such hopeless decay and broken man as he ap- 
peared to be, there was something in the turn of his figure, 
as he stood with his back towards him, and now went out at 


AND THE GHOST’S BARGAIN 389 

the door, that made him pass his hand uneasily across his 
brow. 

‘‘ William,” he said in a gloomy whisper, who is that 
man ? ” 

Why you see. Sir,” returned Mr. William, that’s what 
I say, myself. Why should a man ever go and gamble, and 
the like of that, and let himself down inch by inch till he 
can’t let himself down any lower ! ” 

‘‘ Has he done so ? ” asked Redlaw, glancing after him with 
the same uneasy action as before. 

'‘Just exactly that. Sir,” returned William Swidger, “as 
I’m told. He knows a little about medicine. Sir, it seems; 
and having been wayfaring towards London with my unhappy 
brother that you see here,” Mr. William passed his coat-sleeve 
across his eyes, “ and being lodging upstairs for the night — 
what I say, you see, is that strange companions come to- 
gether here sometimes — he looked in to attend upon 
him and came for us at his request. What a mournful spec- 
tacle, Sir! But that’s where it is. It’s enough to kill my 
father!” 

Redlaw looked up, at these words, and, recalling where 
he was and with whom, and the spell he carried with him — 
which his surprise had obscured — retired a little, hurriedly, 
debating with himself whether to shun the house that mo- 
ment, or remain. 

Yielding to a certain sullen doggedness, which it seemed 
to be a part of his condition to struggle with, he argued for 
remaining. 

“ Was it only yesterday,” he said, “ when I observed the 
memory of this old man to be a tissue of sorrow and trouble, 
and shall I be afraid, to-night, to shake it? Are such remem- 
brances as I can drive away, so precious to this dying man 
that I need fear for hhnf No! I’ll stay here.” 

But he stayed, in fear and trembling none the less for these 
words ; and, shrouded, in his black cloak with his face turned 
from them, stood away from the bedside, listening to what 
they said, as if he felt himself a demon in the place. 

“ Father ! ” murmured the sick man, rallying a little from 
his stupor. 

“ My boy ! My son George ! ” said old Philip. 


THE HAUNTED MAN 


390 

You spoke, just now, of my being mother’s favourite, long 
ago. It’s a dreadful thing to think now, of long ago ! ” 

'' No, no, no,” returned the old man. ‘‘ Think of it. Don’t 
say it’s dreadful. It’s not dreadful to me, my son.” 

“ It cuts you to the heart, father.” For the old man’s tears 
were falling on him. 

“ Yes, yes,” said Philip, ‘‘ so it does ; but it does me good. 
It’s a heavy sorrow to think of that time, but it does me 
good, George. Oh, think of it too, think of it too, and your 
heart will be softened more and more! Where’s my son 
William? William, my boy, your mother loved him dearly 
to the last, and with her latest breath said, ‘ Tell him I for- 
gave him, blessed him, and prayed for him.’ Those were her 
words to me. I have never forgotten them, and I’m eighty- 
seven ! ” 

Father ! ” said the man upon the bed, “ I am dying, I 
know. I am so far gone, that I can hardly speak, even of 
what my mind most runs on. Is there any hope for me be- 
yond this bed ? ” 

There is hope,” returned the old man, “ for all who are 
softened and penitent. There is hope for all such. Oh ! ” 
he exclaimed, clasping his hands and looking up, “ I was 
thankful, only yesterday, that I could remember this unhappy 
son when he was an innocent child. But what a comfort it 
is, now, to think that even God himself has that remembrance 
of him ! ” 

Redlaw spread his hands upon his face, and shrank, like a 
murderer. 

“ Ah ! ” feebly moaned the man upon the bed. “ The waste 
since then, the waste of life since then ! ” 

“ But he was a child once,” said the old man. “ He played 
with children. Before he lay down on his bed at night, and 
fell into his guiltless rest, he said his prayers at his poor 
mother’s knee. I have seen him do it, many a time; and 
seen her lay his head upon her breast, and kiss him. Sorrow- 
ful as it was to her and me, to think of this, when he went 
so wrong, and when our hopes and plans for him were all 
broken, this gave him still a hold upon us, that nothing else 
could have given. O Father, so much better than the fath- 
ers upon earth! O Father, so much more afflicted by the 


AND THE GHOSTS BARGAIN 391 

errors of Thy children! take this wanderer back! Not as 
he is, but as he was then, let him cry to Thee, as he has so 
often seemed to cry to us ! ” 

As the old man lifted up his trembling hands, the son, for 
whom he made the supplication, laid his sinking head against 
him for support and comfort, as if he were indeed the child 
of whom he spoke. 

When did man ever tremble, as Redlaw trembled, in the 
silence that ensued ! He knew it must come upon them, knew 
that it was coming fast. 

'' My time is very short, my breath is shorter,’’ said the 
sick man, supporting himself on one armj and with the other 
groping in the air, and I remember there is something on 
my mind concerning the man who was here just now. Father 
and William — wait! — is there really anything in black, out 
there ? ” 

“ Yes, yes, it is real,” said his aged father. 

Is it a man ? ” 

“ What I say myself, George,” interposed his brother, bend- 
ing kindly over him. “ It’s Mr. Redlaw.” 

I thought I had dreamed of him. Ask him to come 
here.” 

The Chemist, whiter than the dying man, appeared before 
him. Obedient to the motion of his hand, he sat upon the 
bed. 

“ It has been so ripped up, to-night. Sir,” said the sick man, 
laying his hand upon his heart, with a look in which the mute, 
imploring agony of his condition was concentrated, “ by the 
sight of my poor old father, and the thought of all the 
trouble I have been the cause of, and all the wrong and sor- 
row lying at my door, that — ” 

Was it the extremity to which he had come, or was it the 
dawning of another change, that made him stop? 

— that what I can do right with my mind running on so 
much, so fast. I’ll try to do. There was another man here. 
Did you see him ? ” 

Redlaw could not reply by any word; for when he saw 
that fatal sign he knew so well now, of the wandering hand 
upon the forehead, his voice died at his lips. But he made 
some indication of assent. 


THE HAUNTED MAN 


392 

‘‘ He is penniless, hungry, and destitute. He is completely 
beaten down, and has no resource at all. Look after him! 
Lose no time! I know he has it in his mind to kill himself.” 

It was working. It was on his face. His face was chang- 
ing, hardening, deepening in all its shades, and losing all its 
sorrow. 

“Don’t you remember? Don’t you know him?” he pur- 
sued. 

He shut his face out for a moment, with the hand that 
again wandered over his forehead, and then it lowered on 
Redlaw, reckless, ruffianly, and callous. 

“ Why, d — n you ! ” he said, scowling round, “ what have 
you been doing to me here ! I have lived bold, and I mean 
to die bold. To the Devil with you!” 

And so lay down upon his bed, and put his arms up, over 
his head and ears, as resolute from that time to keep out all 
access, and to die in his indifference. 

If Redlaw had been struck by lightning, it could not have 
struck him from the bedside with a more tremendous shock. 
But the old man, who had left the bed while his son was 
speaking to him, now returning, avoided it quickly likewise, 
and with abhorrence. 

“ Where’s my boy William ? ” said the old man hurriedly. 
“ William, come away from here. We’ll go home.” 

“ Home, father ! ” returned William. “ Are you going to 
leave your own son ? ” 

“ Where’s my own son ? ” replied the old man. 

“ Where ? why, there ! ” 

“ That’s no son of mine,” said Philip, trembling with re- 
sentment. “ No such wretch as that, has any claim on me. 
My children are pleasant to look at, and they wait upon me, 
and get my meat and drink ready, and are useful to me. I’ve 
a right to it ! I’m eighty-seven ! ” 

“ You’re old enough to be no older,” muttered William, 
looking at him grudgingly, with his hands in his pockets. 
“ I don’t know what good you are, myself. We could have 
a deal more pleasure without you.” 

“ My son, Mr. Redlaw ! ” said the old man. “ My son, too ! 
The boy talking to me of my son! Why, what has he ever 
done to give me any pleasure, I should like to know ? ” 


AND THE GHOST’S BARGAIN 393 

I don’t know what you have ever done to give me any 
pleasure,” said William, sulkily. 

“ Let me think,” said the old man, “ For how many Christ- 
mas times running, have I sat in my warm place, and never 
had to come out in the cold night air; and have made good 
cheer, without being disturbed by any such uncomfortable, 
wretched sight as him there? Is it twenty, William?” 

Nigher forty, it seems,” he muttered. “ Why, when I 
look at my father. Sir, and come to think of it,” addressing 
Redlaw, with an impatience and irritation that were quite 
new, “ I’m whipped if I can see anything in him but a calendar 
of ever so many years of eating and drinking, and making 
himself comfortable, over and over again.” 

‘‘ I — I’m eighty-seven,” said the old man, rambling on, 
childishly and weakly, and I don’t know as I ever was much 
put out by anything. I’m not going to begin now, because 
of what he calls my son. He’s not my son. I’ve had a power 
of pleasant times. I recollect once — no I don’t — no, it’s 
broken off. It was something about a game of cricket and a 
friend of mine, but it’s somehow broken off. I wonder who 
he was — I suppose I liked him? And I wonder what became 
of him — I suppose he died? But I don’t know. And I don’t 
care, neither; I don’t care a bit.” 

In his drowsy chuckling, and the shaking of his head, he put 
his hands into his waistcoat pockets. In one of them he 
found a bit of holly (left there, probably, last night), which 
he now took out, and looked at. 

Berries, eh ? ” said the old man. “ Ah ! It’s a pity they’re 
not good to eat. I recollect, when I was a little chap about 
as high as that, and out a-walking with — let me see — who was 
I out a-walking with? — no, I don’t remember how that was. 
I don’t remember as I ever walked with any one par- 
ticular, or cared for any one, or any one for me. Berries, eh ? 
There’s good cheer when there’s berries. Well; I ought to 
have my share of it, and to be waited on, and kept warm and 
comfortable; for I’m eighty-seven, and a poor old man. I’m 
eigh-ty-seven. Eigh-ty-seven ! ” 

The drivelling, pitiable manner in which, as he repeated this, 
he nibbled at the leaves, and spat the morsels out; the cold, 
uninterested eye with which his youngest son (so changed) 


THE HAUNTED MAN 


394 

regarded him; the determined apathy with which his eldest 
son lay hardened in his sin; impressed themselves no more on 
Redlaw’s observation, — for he broke his way from the spot 
to which his feet seemed to have been fixed, and ran out of 
the house. 

His guide came crawling forth from his place of refuge, 
and was ready for him before he reached the arches. 

Back to the woman’s ? ” he inquired. 

“ Back, quickly ! ” answered Redlaw. “ Stop nowhere on 
the way ! ” 

For a short distance the boy went on before; but their re- 
turn was more like a flight than a walk, and it was as much 
as his bare feet could do, to keep pace with the Chemist’s 
rapid strides. Shrinking from all who passed, shrouded in 
his cloak, and keeping it drawn closely about him, as though 
there were mortal contagion in any fluttering touch of his 
garments, he made no pause until they reached the door by 
which they had come out. He unlocked it with his key, went 
in, accompanied by the boy, and hastened through the dark 
passages to his own chamber. 

The boy watched him as he made the door fast, and with- 
drew behind the table when he looked round. 

‘"Come!” he said. “Don’t you touch me! You’ve not 
brought me here to take my money away.” 

Redlaw threw some more upon the ground. He flung his 
body on it immediately, as if to hide it from him, lest the 
sight of it should tempt him to reclaim it; and not until he 
saw him seated by his lamp, with his face hidden in his hands, 
began furtively to pick it up. When he had done so, he crept 
near the fire, and, sitting down in a great chair before it, took 
from his breast some broken scraps of food, and fell to munch- 
ing, and to staring at the blaze, and now and then to glancing 
at his shillings, which he kept clenched up in a bunch, in one 
hand. 

“ And this,” said Redlaw, gazing on him with increased 
repugnance and fear, “ is the only one companion I have left 
on earth ! ” 

How long it was before he was aroused from his contempla- 
tion of this creature, whom he dreaded so — whether half-an- 
hour, or half the night — he knew not. But the stillness of 


AND THE GHOST’S BARGAIN 395 

the room was broken by the boy (whom he had seen listening) 
starting up, and running towards the door. 

Here’s the woman coming ! ” he exclaimed. 

The Chemist stopped him on his way, at the moment when 
she knocked. 

“ Let me go to her, will you ? ” said the boy. 

“ Not now,” returned the Chemist. “ Stay here. Nobody 
must pass in or out of the room now. — ^Who’s that ? ” 

“ It’s I, Sir,” cried Milly. “ Pray, Sir, let me in ! ” 

“ No ! not for the world ! ” he said 

** Mr. Redlaw, Mr. Redlaw, pray. Sir, let me in.” 

What is the matter? ” he said, holding the boy. 

“ The miserable man you saw, is worse, and nothing I can 
say will wake him from his terrible infatuation. William’s 
father has turned childish in a moment. William himself is 
changed. The shock has been too sudden for him; I cannot 
understand him ; he is not like himself. Oh, Mr. Redlaw, 
pray advise me, help me ! ” 

No ! No ! No ! ” he answered. 

Mr. Redlaw ! Dear Sir ! George has been muttering, in 
his doze, about the man you saw there, who, he fears, will 
kill himself.” 

“ Better he should do it, than come near me ! ” 

“ He says, in his wandering, that you know him ; that he 
was your friend once, long ago; that he is the ruined father 
of a student here — ^my mind misgives me, of the young gen- 
tleman who has been ill. What is to be done? How is he 
to be followed? How is he to be saved? Mr. Redlaw, pray, 
oh, pray, advise me ! Help me ! ” 

All this time he held the boy, who was half-mad to pass 
him, and let her in. 

Phantoms ! Punishers of impious thoughts ! ” cried Red- 
law, gazing round in anguish, “ Look upon me ! From the 
darkness of my mind, let the glimmering of contrition that I 
know is there, shine up, and show my misery ! In the material 
world, as I have long taught, nothing can be spared; no step 
or atom in the wondrous structure could be lost, without a 
blank being made in the great universe. I know, now, that 
it is the same with good and evil, happiness and sorrow, in 
the memories of men. Pity me ! Relieve me ! ” 


THE HAUNTED MAN 


396 

There was no response, but her Help me, help me, let me 
in ! ” and the boy’s struggling to get to her. 

“ Shadow of myself ! Spirit of my darker hours ! ” cried 
Redlaw, in distraction, Come back, and haunt me day and 
night, but take this gift away! Or, if it must still rest with 
me, deprive me of the dreadful power of giving it to others. 
Undo what I have done. Leave me benighted, but restore 
the day to those whom I have cursed. As I have spared 
this woman from the first, and as I never will go forth again, 
but will die here, with no hand to tend me, save this creature’s 
who is proof against me, — hear me 1 ” 

The only reply still was, the boy struggling to get to her, 
while he held him back; and the cry, increasing in its en- 
ergy, ‘‘Help! let mein. He was your friend once, how 
shall he be followed, how shall he be saved? They are all 
changed, there is no one else to help me; pray, pray, let me 
in!” 


CHAPTER HI 

THE GIFT REVERSED 

N ight was still heavy in the sky. On open plains, from 
hill-tops, and from the decks of solitary ships at sea, a 
distant low-lying line, that promised bye and bye to change to 
light, was visible in the dim horizon; but its promise was re- 
mote and doubtful, and the moon was striving with the night- 
clouds busily. 

The shadows upon Redlaw’s mind succeeded thick and fast 
to one another, and obscured its light as the night-clouds hov- 
ered between the moon and earth, and kept the latter veiled 
in darkness. Fitful and uncertain as the shadows which the 
night-clouds cast, were their concealments from him, and 
imperfect revelations to him; and, like the night-clouds still, 
if the clear light broke forth for a moment, it was only that 
they might sweep over it, and make the darkness deeper than 
before. 

Without, there was a profound and solemn hush upon the 
ancient pile of building, and its buttresses and angles made 
dark shapes of mystery upon the ground, which now seemed 


AND THE GHOST’S BARGAIN 397 

to retire into the smooth white snow and now seemed to come 
out of it, as the moon’s path was more or less beset. Within, 
the Chemist’s room was indistinct and murky, by the light of 
the expiring lamp; a ghostly silence had succeeded to the 
knocking and the voice outside ; nothing was audible but, now 
and then, a low sound among the whitened ashes of the fire, 
as of its yielding up its last breath. Before it on the ground 
the boy lay fast asleep. In his chair, the Chemist sat, as he 
had sat there since the calling at his door had ceased — like a 
man turned to stone. 

At such a time, the Christmas music he had heard before, 
began to play. He listened to it at first, as he had listened 
in the churchyard; but presently — it playing still, and being 
borne towards him on the night air, in a low, sweet, melan- 
choly strain — he rose, and stood stretching his hands about 
him, as if there were some friend approaching within his 
reach, on whom his desolate touch might rest, yet do no harm. 
As he did this, his face became less fixed and wondering; a 
gentle trembling came upon him; and at last his eyes filled 
with tears^ and he put his hands before them, and bowed 
down his head. 

His memory of sorrow, wrong, and trouble, had not come 
back to him; he knew that it was not restored; he had no 
passing belief or hope that it was. But some dumb stir within 
him made him capable, again, of being moved by what was 
hidden, afar off, in the music. If it were only that it told 
him sorrowfully the value of what he had lost, he thanked 
Heaven for it with a fervent gratitude. 

As the last chord died upon his ear, he raised his head to 
listen to its lingering vibration. Beyond the boy, so that his 
sleeping figure lay at his feet, the Phantom stood immovable 
and silent, with its eyes upon him. 

Ghastly it was, as it had ever been, but not so cruel and 
relentless in its aspect — or he thought or hoped so, as he 
looked upon it, trembling. It was not alone, but in its shad- 
owy hand it held another hand. 

And whose was that? Was the form that stood beside it 
indeed Milly’s, or but her shade and picture? The quiet head 
was bent a little, as her manner was, and her eyes were look- 
ing down, as if in pity, on the sleeping child. A radiant light 


THE HAUNTED MAN 


398 

fell on her face, but did not touch the Phantom; for, though 
close beside her, it was dark and colourless as ever. 

Spectre ! ” said the Chemist, newly troubled as he looked, 
“ I have not been stubborn or presumptuous in respect of her. 
Oh, do not bring her here. Spare me that 1 ” 

‘‘ This is but a shadow,” said the Phantom ; “ when the 
morning shines seek out the reality whose image I present be- 
fore you.” 

Is it my inexorable doom to do so ? ” cried the Chem- 
ist. 

“ It is,” replied the Phantom. 

“To destroy her peace, her goodness; to make her what 
I am myself, and what I have made of others ! ” 

“ I have said ' seek her out,’ ” returned the Phantom. “ I 
have said no more.” 

“ Oh, tell me,” exclaimed Redlaw, catching at the hope 
which he fancied might lie hidden in the words. “ Can I 
undo what I have done ? ” 

“ No,” returned the Phantom. 

“ I do not ask for restoration to myself,” said Redlaw. 
“ What I abandoned, I abandoned of my own free will, and 
have justly lost. But for those to whom I have transferred 
the fatal gift ; who never sought it ; who unknowingly received 
a curse of which they had no warning, and which they had 
no power to shun ; can I do nothing ? ” 

“ Nothing,” said the Phantom. 

“ If I cannot, can any one?” 

The Phantom, standing like a statue, kept his gaze upon 
him for a while; then turned its head suddenly, and looked 
upon the shadow at its side. 

“Ah! Can she?” cried Redlaw, still looking upon the 
shade. 

The Phantom released the hand it had retained till now, 
and softly raised its own with a gesture of dismissal. Upon 
that, her shadow, still preserving the same attitude, began to 
move or melt away. 

“ Stay,” cried Redlaw with an earnestness to which he could 
not give enough expression. “For a moment 1 As an act of 
mercy ! I know that some change fell upon me, when those 
sounds were in the air just now. Tell me, have I lost the 


AND THE GHOST’S BARGAIN 


399 

power of harming her? May I go near her without dread? 
Oh, let her give me any sign of hope ! ” 

The Phantom looked upon the shade as he did — not at him 
— and gave no answer. 

“ At least, say this — has she, henceforth, the consciousness 
of any power to set right what I have done ? ” 

She has not/’ the Phantom answered. 

Has she the power bestowed on her without the conscious- 
ness ? ” 

The Phantom answered : ‘‘ Seek her out.” And her 
shadow slowly vanished. 

They were face to face again, and looking on each other, 
as intently and awfully as at the time of the bestowal of the 
gift, across the boy who still lay on the ground between them, 
at the Phantom’s feet. 

'' Terrible instructor,” said the Chemist, sinking on his knee 
before it, in an attitude of supplication, by whom I was 
renounced, but by whom I am revisited (in which, and in 
whose milder aspect, I would fain believe I have a gleam of 
hope), I will obey without inquiry, praying that the cry I 
have sent up in the anguish of my soul has been, or will be, 
heard, in behalf of those whom I have injured beyond human 
reparation. But there is one thing — ” 

“ You speak to me of what is lying here,” the Phantom in- 
terposed, and pointed with its finger to the boy. 

I do,” returned the Chemist. “ You know what I would 
ask. Why has this child alone been proof against my in- 
fluence, and why, why, have I detected in its thoughts a terrible 
companionship with mine?” 

This,” said the Phantom, pointing to the boy, is the 
last, completest illustration of a human creature, utterly bereft 
of such remembrances as you have yielded up. No softening 
memory of sorrow, wrong, or trouble enters here, because 
this wretched mortal from his birth has been abandoned to a 
worse condition than the beasts, and has, within his knowledge, 
no one contrast, no humanising touch, to make a grain of 
such a memory spring up in his hardened breast. All within 
this desolate creature is barren wilderness. All within the 
man bereft of what you have resigned, is the same barren wil- 
derness. Woe to such a man! Woe, tenfold, to the nation 


THE HAUNTED MAN 


400 

that shall count its monsters such as this, lying here, by hun- 
dreds and by thousands ! ” 

Redlaw shrank, appalled, from what he heard. 

“ There is not,” said the Phantom, “ one of these — not one 
— but sows a harvest that mankind must reap. From every 
seed of evil in this boy, a field of grain is grown that shall 
be gathered in, and garnered up, and sown again in many 
places in the world, until regions are overspread with wicked- 
ness enough to raise the waters of another Deluge. Open 
and unpunished murder in a city’s streets would be less guilty 
in its daily toleration, than one such spectacle as this.” 

It seemed to look down upon the boy in his sleep. Red- 
law, too, looked down upon him with a new emotion. 

‘‘ There is not a father,” said the Phantom, “ by whose 
side in his daily or his nightly walk, these creatures pass ; 
there is not a mother among all the ranks of loving mothers 
in this land; there is no one risen from the state of child- 
hood, but shall be responsible in his or her degree for this 
enormity. There is not a country throughout the earth on 
which it would not bring a curse. There is no religion upon 
earth that it would not deny; there is no people upon earth 
it would not put to shame.” 

The Chemist clasped his hands, and looked, with trembling 
fear and pity, from the sleeping boy to the Phantom, standing 
above him with its finger pointing down. 

Behold, I say,” pursued the Spectre, '' the perfect type 
of what it was your choice to be. Your influence is powerless 
here, because from this child’s bosom you can banish nothing. 
His thoughts have been in ^ terrible companionship ’ with 
yours, because you have gone down to his unnatural level. 
He is the growth of man’s indifference ; you are the growth 
of man’s presumption. The beneficent design of Heaven is, 
in each case, overthrown, and from the two poles of the im- 
material world you come together.” 

The Chemist stooped upon the ground beside the boy, and, 
with the same kind of compassion for him that he now felt 
for himself, covered him as he slept, and no longer shrank 
from him with abhorrence or indifference. 

Soon, now, the distant line on the horizon brightened, the 
darkness faded, the sun rose red and glorious, and the chim- 


AND THE GHOST’S BARGAIN 401 

ney stacks and gables of the ancient building gleamed in the 
clear air, which turned the smoke and vapour of the city into 
a cloud of gold. The very sundial in his shady corner, where 
the wind was used to spin with such unwindy constancy, shook 
off the finer particles of snow that had accumulated on his dull 
old face in the night, and looked out at the little white wreaths 
eddying round and round him. Doubtless some blind groping 
of the morning made its way down into the forgotten crypt 
so cold and earthy, where the Norman arches were half buried 
in the ground, and stirred the dull sap in the lazy vegetation 
hanging to the walls, and quickened the slow principle of 
life within the little world of wonderful and delicate creation 
which existed there, with some faint knowledge that the sun 
was up. 

The Tetterbys were up, and doing. Mr. Tetterby took 
down the shutters of the shop, and, strip by strip, revealed 
the treasures of the window to the eyes, so proof against their 
seductions, of Jerusalem Buildings. Adolphus had been out 
so long, already, that he was half way on to “ Morning Pep- 
per.” Five small Tetterbys, whose ten round eyes were much 
inflamed by soap and friction, were in the tortures of a cool 
wash in the back kitchen; Mrs. Tetterby presiding. Johnny, 
who was pushed and hustled through his toilet with great 
rapidity when Moloch chanced to be in an exacting frame of 
mind (which was always the case), staggered up and down 
with his charge before the shop door, under greater difficulties 
than usual ; the weight of Moloch being much increased by a 
complication of defences against the cold, composed of knitted 
worsted-work, and forming a complete suit of chain-armour, 
with a head-piece and blue gaiters. 

It was a peculiarity of this baby to be always cutting teeth. 
Whether they never came, or whether they came and went 
away again, is not in evidence ; but it had certainly cut enough, 
on the showing of Mrs. Tetterby, to make a handsome dental 
provision for the sign of the Bull and Mouth. All sorts of 
objects were impressed for the rubbing of its gums, notwith- 
standing that it always carried, dangling at its waist (which 
was immediately under its chin), a bone ring, large enough 
to have represented the rosary of a young nun. Knife-han- 
dles, umbrella-tops, the heads of walking-sticks selected from 


THE HAUNTED MAN 


402 

the stock, the fingers of the family in general, but especially 
of Johnny, nutmeg-graters, crusts, the handles of doors, and 
the cool knobs on the tops of pokers, were among the com- 
monest instruments indiscriminately applied for this baby’s 
relief. The amount of electricity that must have been rubbed 
out of it in a week, is not to be calculated. Still Mrs. Tetterby 
always said “ it was coming through, and then the child would 
be herself ; ” and still it never did come through, and the child 
continued to be somebody else. 

The tempers of the little Tetterbys had sadly changed with 
a few hours. Mr. and Mrs. Tetterby themselves were not 
more altered than their offspring. Usually they were an 
unselfish, good-natured, yielding little race, sharing short com- 
mons when it happened (which was pretty often) contentedly 
and ever generously, and taking a great deal of enjoyment out 
of a very little meat. But they were fighting now, not only 
for the soap and water, but even for the breakfast which was 
yet in perspective. The hand of every little Tetterby was 
against the other little Tetterbys; and even Johnny’s hand — 
the patient, much-enduring, and devoted Johnny — rose against 
the baby! Yes, Mrs. Tetterby, going to the door by mere 
accident, saw him viciously pick out a weak place in the suit 
of armour where a slap would tell, and slap that blessed child. 

Mrs. Tetterby had him into the parlour by the collar, in that 
same flash of time, and repaid him the assault with usury 
thereto. 

You brute, you murdering little boy,” said Mrs. Tetterby. 
“ Had you the heart to do it ? ” 

“ Why don’t her teeth come through, then,” retorted 
Johnny, in a loud rebellious voice, “ instead of bothering me? 
How would you like it yourself?” 

“ Like it. Sir I ” said Mrs. Tetterby, relieving him of his 
dishonoured load. 

'‘Yes, like it,” said Johnny. "How would you? Not at 
all. If you was me, you’d go for a soldier. I will, too. 
There an’t no babies in the Army.” 

Mr. Tetterby, who had arrived upon the scene of action, 
rubbed his chin thoughtfully, instead of correcting the rebel, 
and seemed rather struck by this view of a military life. 

" I wish I was in the Army myself, if the child’s in the 


AND THE GHOST’S BARGAIN 403 

right,” said Mrs. Tetterby, looking at her husband, for I 
have no peace of my life here. I’m a slave — a Virginia 
slave : ” some indistinct association -with their -weak descent 
on the tobacco trade perhaps suggested this aggravated ex- 
pression to Mrs. Tetterby. I never have a holiday, or any 
pleasure at all, from year’s end to year’s end ! Why, Lord bless 
and save the child,” said Mrs. Tetterby, shaking the baby with 
an irritability hardly suited to so pious an aspiration, “ what’s 
the matter with her now ? ” 

Not being able to discover, and not rendering the subject 
much clearer by shaking it, Mrs. Tetterby put the baby away 
in a cradle, and, folding her arms, sat rocking it angrily with 
her foot. 

‘‘ How you stand there, ’Dolphus,” said Mrs. Tetterby to 
her husband. “ Why don’t you do something ? ” 

“ Because I don’t care about doing anything,” Mr. Tetterby 
replied. 

I am sure I don’t,” said Mrs. Tetterby. 

“ I’ll take my oath / don’t,” said Mr. Tetterby. 

A diversion arose here among Johnny and his five younger 
brothers, who, in preparing the family breakfast table, had 
fallen to skirmishing for the temporary possession of the loaf, 
and were buffeting one another with great heartiness; the 
smallest boy of all, with precocious discretion, hovering out- 
side the knot of combatants, and harassing their legs. Into 
the midst of this fray, Mr. and Mrs. Tetterby both precipitated 
themselves with great ardour, as if such ground were the only 
ground on which they could now agree; and having, with no 
visible remains of their late soft-heartedness, laid about them 
without any lenity, and done much execution, resumed their 
former relative positions. 

“ You had better read your paper than do nothing at all,” 
said Mrs. Tetterby. 

“ What’s there to read in a paper? ” returned Mr. Tetterby, 
with excessive discontent. 

‘"What?” said Mrs. Tetterby. “Police.” 

“ It’s nothing to me,” said Tetterby. “ What do I care 
what people do, or are done to ? ” 

“ Suicides,” suggested Mrs. Tetterby. 

“ No business of mine,” replied her husband. 


THE HAUNTED MAN 


404 

Births, deaths, and marriages, are those nothing to you ? ” 
said Mrs. Tetterby. 

“If the births were all over for good, and all to-day; 
and the deaths were all to begin to come off to-morrow; I 
don’t see why it should interest me, till I thought it was a- 
coming to my turn,” grumbled Tetterby. “ As to marriages. 
I’ve done it myself. I know quite enough about them.'' 

To judge from the dissatisfied expression of her face and 
manner, Mrs. Tetterby appeared to entertain the same opinions 
as her husband; but she opposed him, nevertheless, for the 
gratification of quarrelling with him. 

“ Oh, you’re a consistent man,” said Mrs. Tetterby, “ an’t 
you? You, with the screen of your own making there, made 
of nothing else but bits of newspapers, which you sit and read 
to the children by the half-hour together ! ” 

“ Say used to, if you please,” returned her husband. “ You 
won’t find me doing so any more. I’m wiser now.” 

“ Bah ! wiser, indeed ! ” said Mrs. Tetterby. “ Are you 
better?” 

The question sounded some discordant note in Mr. Tetter- 
by’s breast. He ruminated dejectedly, and passed his hand 
across and across his forehead. 

“ Better ! ” murmured Mr. Tetterby. “ I don’t know as any 
of us are better, or happier either. Better, is it ? ” 

He turned to the screen, and traced about it with his fin- 
ger, until he found a certain paragraph of which he was in 
quest. 

“ This used to be one of the family favourites, I recollect,” 
said Tetterby, in a forlorn and stupid way, “ and used to draw 
tears from the children, and make ’em good, if there was any 
little bickering or discontent among ’em, next to the story of 
the robin redbreasts in the wood. ‘ Melancholy case of desti- 
tution. Yesterday a small man, with a baby in his arms, and 
surrounded by a half-a-dozen ragged little ones, of various 
ages between ten and two, the whole of whom were evidently 
in a famishing condition, appeared before the worthy magis- 
trate, and made the following recital : ’ — Ha ! I don’t under- 
stand it, I’m sure,” said Tetterby ; “ I don’t see what it has 
got to do with us.” 

“ How old and shabby he looks,” said Mrs. Tetterby, watch- 


AND THE GHOST’S BARGAIN 


405 

ing him. ‘‘ I never saw such a change in a man. Ah ! dear 
me, dear me, dear me, it was a sacrifice ! ” 

“ What was a sacrifice ? ” her husband sourly inquired. 

Mrs. Tetterby shook her head; and without replying in 
words, raised a complete sea-storm about the baby, by her 
violent agitation of the cradle. 

If you mean your marriage was a sacrifice, my good 
woman — ” said her husband. 

I do mean it,” said his wife. 

“ Why, then I mean to say,” pursued Mr. Tetterby, as 
sulkily and surlily as she, “ that there are two sides to that 
affair; and that / was the sacrifice; and that I wish the 
sacrifice hadn’t been accepted.” 

I wish it hadn’t, Tetterby, with all my heart and soul I do 
assure you,” said his wife. “ You can’t wish it more than I 
do, Tetterby.” 

“ I don’t know what I saw in her,” muttered the newsman, 
“ I’m sure ; — certainly, if I saw anything, it’s not there now. 
I was thinking so, last night, after supper, by the fire. She’s 
fat, she’s ageing, she won’t bear comparison with most other 
women.” 

He’s common-looking, he has no air with him, he’s small, 
he’s beginning to stoop, and he’s getting bald,” muttered Mrs. 
Tetterby. 

“ I must have been half out of my mind when I did it,” 
muttered Mr. Tetterby. 

My senses must have forsook me. That’s the only way 
in which I can explain it to myself,” said Mrs. Tetterby, with 
elaboration. 

In this mood they sat down to breakfast. The little Tet- 
terbys were not habituated to regard that meal in the light of a 
sedentary occupation, but discussed it as a dance or trot; 
rather resembling a savage ceremony, in the occasional shrill 
whoops, and brandishings of bread and butter, with which it 
was accompanied, as well as in the intricate filings off into 
the street and back again, and the hoppings up and down the 
doorsteps, which were incidental to the performance. In the 
present instance, the contentions between these Tetterby chil- 
dren for the milk-and-water jug, common to all, which stood 
upon the table, presented so lamentable an instance of angry 


THE HAUNTED MAN 


406 

passions risen very high indeed, that it was an outrage on the 
memory of Doctor Watts. It was not until Mr. Tetterby had 
driven the whole herd out at the front door, that a moment’s 
peace was secured ; and even that was broken by the discovery 
that Johnny had surreptitiously come back, and was at that in- 
stant choking in the jug like a ventriloquist, in his indecent 
and rapacious haste. 

These children will be the death of me at last ! ” said Mrs. 
Tetterby, after banishing the culprit. ‘‘And the sooner the 
better, I think.” 

“ Poor people,” said Mr. Tetterby, “ ought not to have 
children at all. They give us no pleasure.” 

He was at that moment taking up the cup which Mrs. Tet- 
terby had rudely pushed towards him, and Mrs. Tetterby was 
lifting her own cup to her lips, when they were both stopped, 
as if they were transfixed. 

“Here! Mother! Father!” cried Johnny, running into 
the room. “ Here’s Mrs. William coming down the street ! ” 

And if ever, since the world began, a young boy took a 
baby from a cradle with the care of an old nurse, and hushed 
and soothed it tenderly, and tottered away with it cheerfully, 
Johnny was that boy, and Moloch was that baby, as they went 
out together ! 

Mr. Tetterby put down his cup; Mrs. Tetterby put down 
her cup. Mr. Tetterby rubbed his forehead; Mrs. Tetterby 
rubbed hers. Mr. Tetterby’s face began to smooth and 
brighten; Mrs. Tetterby’s began to smooth and brighten. 

“ Why, Lord forgive me,” said Mr. Tetterby to himself, 
“ what evil tempers have I been giving way to ? What has 
been the matter here ? ” 

“ How could I ever treat him ill again, after all I said and 
felt last night! ” sobbed Mrs. Tetterby, with her apron to her 
eyes. 

“ Am I a brute,” said Mr. Tetterby, “ or is there any good 
in me at all? Sophia! My little woman!” 

“ ’Dolphus dear,” returned his wife. 

“ I — I’ve been in a state of mind,” said Mr. Tetterby, “ that 
I can’t abear to think of, Sophy.” 

“ Oh ! It’s nothing to what I’ve been in, Dolf,” cried his 
wife in a great burst of grief. 


AND THE GHOST’S BARGAIN 


407 

My Sophia,” said Mr. Tetterby, don’t take on. I never 
shall forgive myself. I must have nearly broken your heart, 
I know.” 

“No, Dolf, no. It was me! Me!” cried Mrs. Tet- 
terby. 

“ My little woman,” said her husband, “ don’t. You make 
me reproach myself dreadful, when you show such a noble 
spirit. Sophia, my dear, you don’t know what I thought. I 
showed it bad enough, no doubt; but what I thought, my 
little woman ! ” — 

“ Oh, dear Dolf, don’t! Don’t! ” cried his wife. 

“ Sophia,” said Mr. Tetterby, “ I must reveal it. I couldn’t 
rest in my conscience unless I mentioned it. My little 
woman — ” 

“ Mrs. William’s very nearly here ! ” screamed Johnny at 
the door. 

“ My little woman, I wondered how,” gasped Mr. Tetterby, 
supporting himself by his chair, “ I wondered how I had ever 
admired you — I forgot the precious children you have brought 
about me, and thought you didn’t look as slim as I could wish. 
I — I never gave a recollection,” said Mr. Tetterby, with severe 
self-accusation, “ to the cares you’ve had as my wife, and 
along of me and mine, when you might have had hardly any 
with another man, who got on better and was luckier than me 
(anybody might have found such a man easily I am sure) ; 
and I quarrelled with you for having aged a little in the 
rough years you have lightened for me. Can you believe it, 
my little woman? I hardly can myself.” 

Mrs. Tetterby, in a whirlwind of laughing and crying, 
caught his face within her hands, and held it there. 

“ Oh, Dolf ! ” she cried. “ I am so happy that you thought 
so; I am so grateful that you thought so! For I thought that 
you were common-looking, Dolf ; and so you are, my dear, 
and may you be the commonest of all sights in my eyes, till 
you close them with your own good hands. I thought that 
you were small ; and so you are, and I’ll make much of you 
because you are, and more of you because I love my husband. 
I thought that you began to stoop; and so you do, and you 
shalj lean on me, and I’ll do all I can to keep you up. 
I thought there was no air about you; but there is, and it’s 


THE HAUNTED MAN 


408 

the air of home, and that’s the purest and the best there 
is, and God bless home once more, and all belonging to it, 
Dolf ! ” 

‘‘ Hurrah ! Here’s Mrs. William ! ” cried Johnny. 

So she was, and all the children with her; and as she came 
in, they kissed her, and kissed one another, and kissed the 
baby, and kissed their father and mother, and then ran back 
and flocked and danced about her, trooping on with her in 
triumph. 

Mr. and Mrs. Tetterby were not a bit behindhand in the 
warmth of their reception. They were as much attracted to 
her as the children were; they ran towards her, kissed her 
hands, pressed round her, could not receive her ardently or 
enthusiastically enough. She came among them like the spirit 
'of all goodness, affection, gentle consideration, love, and 
domesticity. 

“ What ! are you all so glad to see me, too, this bright 
Christmas morning?” said Milly, clapping her hands in a 
pleasant wonder. ‘‘ O dear, how delightful this is ! ” 

More shouting from the children, more kissing, more troop- 
ing round her, more happiness, more love, more joy, more 
honour, on all sides, than she could bear. 

“ O dear ! ” said Milly, “ what delicious tears you make 
me shed. How can I ever have deserved this ! What have 
I done to be so loved ? ” 

“ Who can help it! ” cried Mr. Tetterby. 

“Who can help it!” cried Mrs. Tetterby. 

“ Who can help it ! ” echoed the children, in a joyful chorus. 
And they danced and trooped about her again, and clung to 
her, and laid their rosy faces against her dress, and kissed 
and fondled it, and could not fondle it, or her, enough. 

“ I never was so moved,” said Milly, drying her eyes, “ as 
I have been this morning. I must tell you, as soon as I can 
speak. — Mr. Redlaw came to me at sunrise, and with a tender- 
ness in his manner, more as if I had been his darling daughter 
than myself, implored me to go with him to where William’s 
brother George is lying ill. We went together, and all the 
way along he was so kind, and so subdued, and seemed to put 
such trust and hope in me, that I could not help crying with 
pleasure. When we got to the house, we met a woman at 


AND THE GHOST’S BARGAIN 409 

the door (somebody had bruised and hurt her, I am afraid) 
who caught me by the hand, and blessed me as I passed.” 

“ She was right ! ” said Mr. Tetterby. Mrs. Tetterby said 
she was right. All the children cried out that she was right. 

'' Ah, but there’s more than that,” said Milly. ‘‘ When we 
got upstairs, into the room, the sick man who had lain for 
hours in a state from which no effort could rouse him, rose 
up in his bed, and, bursting into tears, stretched out his arms 
to me, and said that he had led a mis-spent life, but that he 
was truly repentant now in his sorrow for the past, which was 
all as plain to him as a great prospect, from which a dense 
black cloud had cleared away, and that he entreated me to 
ask his poor old father for his pardon and his blessing, and to 
say a prayer beside his bed. And when I did so, Mr. Redlaw 
joined in it so fervently, and then so thanked and thanked me, 
and thanked Heaven, that my heart quite overflowed, and I 
could have done nothing but sob and cry, if the sick man had 
not begged me to sit down by him, — which made me quiet of 
course. As I sat there, he held my hand in his until he sank 
in a doze; and even then, when I withdrew my hand to leave 
him to come here (which Mr. Redlaw was very earnest indeed 
in wishing me to do), his hand felt for mine, so that some one 
else was obliged to take my place and make believe to give 
him my hand back. O dear, O dear,” said Milly, sobbing. 
‘‘ How thankful and how happy I should feel, and do feel, for 
all this ! ” 

While she was speaking, Redlaw had come in, and after 
pausing for a moment to observe the group of which she 
was the centre, had silently ascended the stairs. Upon those 
stairs he now appeared again; remaining there, while the 
young student passed him, and came running down. 

Kind nurse, gentlest, best of creatures,” he said, falling 
on his knee to her, and catching at her hand, '' forgive my 
cruel ingratitude ! ” 

O dear, O dear ! ” cried Milly innocently, “ here’s an- 
other of them! O dear, here’s somebody else who likes me. 
What shall I ever do ! ” 

The guileless, simple way in which she said it, and in which 
she put her hands before her eyes and wept for very happiness, 
was as touching as it was delightful. 


THE HAUNTED MAN 


410 

I was not myself,” he said. I don^t know what it was 
- — it was some consequence of my disorder perhaps — I was 
mad. But I am so no longer. Almost as I speak, I am re- 
stored. I heard the children crying out your name, and the 
shade passed from me at the very sound of it. Oh, don’t 
weep ! Dear Milly, if you could read my heart, and only 
knew with what affection and what grateful homage it is 
glowing, you would not let me see you weep. It is such deep 
reproach.” 

“ No, no,” said Milly, “ it’s not that. It’s not indeed. It’s 
joy. It’s wonder that you should think it necessary to ask me 
to forgive so little, and yet it’s pleasure that you do.” 

“ And will you come again ? and will you finish the little 
curtain ? ” 

“ No,” said Milly, drying her eyes, and shaking her head. 
'' You won’t care for my needlework now.” 

Is it forgiving me, to say that? ” 

She beckoned him aside, and whispered in his ear. 

“ There is news from your home, Mr. Edmund.” 

^‘News? How?” 

Either your not writing when you were very ill, or the 
change in your handwriting when you began to be better, 
created some suspicion of the truth; however that is — but 
you’re sure you’ll not be the worse for any news, if it’s not 
bad news ? ” 

“ Sure.” 

“ Then there’s some one come ! ” said Milly. 

“ My mother ? ” asked the student, glancing round invol- 
untarily towards Redlaw, who had come down from the stairs. 

“ Hush ! No,” said Milly. 

“ It can be no one else.” 

Indeed? ” said Milly, “ are you sure? ” 

“ It is not — .” Before he could say more, she put her hand 
upon his mouth. 

‘‘Yes it is!” said Milly. “The young lady (she is very 
like the miniature, Mr. Edmund, but she is prettier) was too 
unhappy to rest without satisfying her doubts, and came up, 
last night, with a little servant-maid. As you always dated 
your letters from the college, she came there; and before I 


AND THE GHOST’S BARGAIN 


411 

saw Mr. Redlaw this morning, I saw her. She likes me too ! ” 
said Milly. “ O dear, that’s another ! ” 

“ This morning ! Where is she now ? ” 

Why, she is now,” said Milly, advancing her lips to his 
ear, “ in my little parlour in the Lodge, and waiting to see 
you.” 

He pressed her hand, and was darting off, but she detained 
him. 

“ Mr. Redlaw is much altered, and has told me this morn- 
ing that his memory is impaired. Be very considerate to him, 
Mr. Edmund; he needs that from us all.” 

The young man assured her, by a look, that her caution was 
not ill-bestowed; and as he passed the Chemist on his way 
out, bent respectfully and with an obvious interest before him. 

Redlaw returned the salutation courteously and even 
humbly, and looked after him as he passed on. He drooped 
his head upon his hand too, as trying to reawaken something 
he had lost. But it was gone. 

The abiding change that had come upon him since the in- 
fluence of the music, and the Phantom’s reappearance, was 
that now he truly felt how much he had lost, and could com- 
passionate his own condition, and contrast it, clearly, with the 
natural state of those who were around him. In this, an in- 
terest in those who were around him was revived, and a meek, 
submissive sense of his calamity was bred, resembling that 
which sometimes obtains in age, when its mental powers are 
weakened, without insensibility or sullenness being added to 
the list of its infirmities. 

He was conscious that, as he redeemed, through Milly, more 
and more of the evil he had done, and as he was more and 
more with her, this change ripened itself within him. There- 
fore, and because of the attachment she inspired him with 
(but without other hope), he felt that he was quite dependent 
on her, and that she was his staff in his affliction. 

So, when she asked him whether they should go home now, 
to where the old man and her husband were, and he readily 
replied yes ” — ^being anxious in that regard — he put his arm 
through hers, and walked beside her; not as if he were the 
wise and learned man to whom the wonders of Nature were 


THE HAUNTED MAN 


412 

an open book, and hers were the uninstructed mind, but as if 
their two positions were reversed, and he knew nothing, and 
she all. 

He saw the children throng about her, and caress her, as 
he and she went away together thus, out of the house; he 
heard the ringing of their laughter, and their merry voices ; 
he saw their bright faces, clustering around him like flowers ; 
he witnessed the renewed contentment and affection of their 
parents; he breathed the simple air of their poor home, re- 
stored to its tranquillity; he thought of the unwholesome 
blight he had shed upon it, and might, but for her, have been 
diffusing then ; and perhaps it is no wonder that he walked 
submissively beside her, and drew her gentle bosom nearer 
to his own. 

When they arrived at the Lodge, the old man was sitting in 
his chair in the chimney-corner, with his eyes fixed on the 
ground, and his son was leaning against the opposite side of 
the fire-place, looking at him. As she came in at the door, 
both started, and turned round towards her, and a radiant 
change came upon their faces. 

“ Oh dear, dear, dear, they are all pleased to see me like 
the rest ! ” cried Milly, clapping her hands in an ecstasy, and 
stopping short. Here are two more ! ” 

Pleased to see her ! Pleasure was no word for it. She ran 
into her husband’s arms, thrown wide open to receive her, and 
he would have been glad to have her there, with her head 
lying on his shoulder, through the short winter’s day. But 
the old man couldn’t spare her. He had arms for her too, 
and he locked her in them. 

“ Why, where has my quiet Mouse been all this time ? ” 
said the old man. “ She has been a long while away. I find 
that it’s impossible for me to get on without Mouse. I — 
where’s my son William? — I fancy I have been dreaming, 
William.” 

“ That’s what I say myself, father,” returned his son. I 
have been in an ugly sort of dream, I think. — ^How are you, 
father? Are you pretty well?” 

“ Strong and brave, my boy,” returned the old man. 

^ It was quite a sight to see Mr. William shaking hands with 
his father, and patting him on the back, and rubbing him 


AND THE GHOST’S BARGAIN 


413 

gently down with his hand, as if he could not possibly do 
enough to show an interest in him. 

“ What a wonderful man you are, father ! — How are you, 
father? Are you really pretty hearty, though? ” said William, 
shaking hands with him again, and patting him again, and 
rubbing him gently down again. 

I never was fresher or stouter in my life, my boy.” 

“ What a wonderful man you are, father ! But that’s 
exactly where it is,” said Mr. William, with enthusiasm. 
“ When I think of all that my father’s gone through, and all 
the chances and changes, and sorrows and troubles, that have 
happened to him in the course of his long life, and under 
which his head has grown grey, and years upon years have 
gathered on it, I feel as if we couldn’t do enough to honour 
the old gentleman, and make his old age easy. — How are you, 
father ? Are you really pretty well, though ? ” 

Mr. William might never have left off repeating this in- 
quiry, and shaking hands with him again, and patting him 
again, and rubbing him down again, if the old man had not 
espied the Chemist, whom until now he had not seen. 

'' I ask your pardon, Mr. Redlaw,” said Philip, ‘‘ but didn’t 
know you were here. Sir, or should have made less free. It 
reminds me, Mr. Redlaw, seeing you here on a Christmas 
morning, of the time when you was a student yourself, and 
worked so hard that you was backwards and forwards in our 
Library even at Christmas time. Ha! ha! I’m old enough 
to remember that; and I remember it right well, I do, though 
I’m eighty-seven. It was after you left here that my poor 
wife died. You remember my poor wife, Mr. Redlaw?” 

The Chemist answered yes. 

“Yes,” said the old man. “She was a dear creetur. — 
I recollect you come here one Christmas morning with a 
young lady — I ask your pardon, Mr. Redlaw, but I think it 
was a sister you was very much attached to ? ” 

The Chemist looked at him, and shook his head. “ I had a 
sister,” he said vacantly. He knew no more. 

“ One Christmas morning,” pursued the old man, “ that you 
come here with her — and it began to snow, and my wife in- 
vited the young lady to walk in, and sit by the fire that is 
always a-burning on Christmas Day in what used to be, before 


THE HAUNTED MAN 


414 

our ten poor gentlemen commuted, our great Dinner Hall. 1 
was there; and I recollect, as I was stirring up the blaze for 
the young lady to warm her pretty feet by, she read the scroll 
out loud, that is underneath that picter. ‘ Lord, keep my 
memory green ! ’ She and my poor wife fell a-talking about 
it; and it’s a strange thing to think of, now, that they both 
said (both being so unlike to die) that it was a good prayer, 
and that it was one they would put up very earnestly, if they 
were called away young, with reference to those who were 
dearest to them. ‘ My brother,’ says the young lady — ' My 
husband,’ says my poor wife. — ' Lord, keep his memory of me, 
green, and do not let me be forgotten ! ’ ” 

Tears more painful, and more bitter than he had ever shed 
in all his life, coursed down Redlaw’s face. Philip, fully 
occupied in recalling his story, had not observed him until 
now, nor Milly’s anxiety that he should not proceed. 

“ Philip ! ” said Redlaw, laying his hand upon his arm, “ I 
am a stricken man, on whom the hand of Providence has 
fallen heavily, although deservedly. You speak to me, my 
friend, of what I cannot follow ; my memory is gone.” 

“ Merciful Power ! ” cried the old man. 

I have lost my memory of sorrow, wrong, and trouble,” 
said the Chemist, “ and with that I have lost all man would 
remember ! ” 

To see old Philip’s pity for him, to see him wheel his 
own great chair for him to rest in, and look down upon him 
with a solemn sense of his bereavement, was to know, 
in some degree, how precious to old age such recollections 
are. 

The boy came running in, and ran to Milly. 

“ Here’s the man,” he said, “ in the other room. I don’t 
want him!^ 

“ What man does he mean? ” asked Mr. William. 

‘‘Hush!” said Milly. 

Obedient to a sign from her, he and his old father softly 
withdrew. As they went out, unnoticed, Redlaw beckoned to 
the boy to come to him. 

“ I like the woman best,” he answered, holding to her 
skirts. 

“ You are right,” said Redlaw, with a faint smile. “ But 


AND THE GHOST’S BARGAIN 


4^5 

you needn’t fear to come to me. I am gentler than I was. 
Of all the world, to you, poor child ! ” 

The boy still held back at first, but yielding little by little to 
her urging, he consented to approach, and even to sit down 
at his feet. As Redlaw laid his hand upon the shoulder of 
the child, looking on him with compassion and a fellow-feeling, 
he put out his other hand to Milly. She stooped down on 
that side of him, so that she could look into his face, and after 
silence, said: 

Mr. Redlaw, may I speak to you ? ” 

Yes,” he answered, fixing his eyes upon her. “ Your 
voice and music are the same to me.” 

May I ask you something? ” 

“ What you will.” 

‘‘ Do you remember what I said, when I knocked at your 
door last night? About one who was your friend once, and 
who stood on the verge of destruction? ” 

Yes. I remember,” he said, with some hesitation. 

“ Do you understand it ? ” 

He smoothed the boy’s hair — looking at her fixedly the 
while, and shook his head. 

“ This person,” said Milly, in her clear, soft voice, which 
her mild eyes, looking at him, made clearer and softer, ‘‘ I 
found soon afterwards. I went back to the house, and, with 
Heaven’s help, traced him. I was not too soon. A very little 
and I should have been too late.” 

He took his hand from the boy, and laying it on the back 
of that hand of hers, whose timid and yet earnest touch ad- 
dressed him no less appealingly than her voice and eyes, 
looked more intently on her. 

“ He ts the father of Mr. Edmund, the young gentleman 
we saw just now. His real name is Longford. — You recol- 
lect the name? ” 

“ I recollect the name.” \ 

And the man ? ” 

No, not the man. Did he ever wrong me? ” 

“ Yes ! ” 

Ah ! Then it’s hopeless — hopeless.” 

He shook his head, and softly beat upon the hand he held, 
as though mutely asking her commiseration. 


THE HAUNTED MAN 


416 

I did not go to Mr. Edmund last night/' said Milly, — 
“You will listen to me just the same as if you did remember 
all?" 

“To every syllable you say." 

“ Both, because I did not know, then, that this really was 
his father, and because I was fearful of the effect of such 
intelligence upon him, after his illness, if it should be. Since 
I have known who this person is, I have not gone either; but 
that is for another reason. He has long been separated from 
his wife and son — has been a stranger to his home almost 
from this son’s infancy, I learn from him — and has abandoned 
and deserted what he should have held most dear. In all 
that time he has been falling from the state of a gentleman^ 
more and more, until — " she rose up, hastily, and going out 
for a moment, returned, accompanied by the wreck that Red- 
law beheld last night. 

“ Do you know me ? " asked the Chemist. 

“ I should be glad," returned the other, “ and that is an 
unwonted word for me to use, if I could answer no." 

The Chemist looked at the man, standing in self-abasement 
and degradation before him, and would have looked longer, 
in an ineffectual struggle for enlightenment, but that Milly 
resumed her late position by his side, and attracted his at- 
tentive gaze to her own face. 

“ See how low he is sunk, how lost he is ! " she whispered, 
stretching out her arm towards him, without looking from the 
Chemist’s face. “If you could remember all that is con- 
nected with him, do you not think it would move your pity to 
reflect that one you ever loved (do not let us mind how long 
ago, or in what belief that he has forfeited), should come to 
this?" 

“ I hope it would," he answered. “ I believe it would." 

His eyes wandered to the figure standing near the door, 
but came back speedily to her, on whom he gazed intently, as 
if he strove to learn some lesson from every tone of her voice, 
and every beam of her eyes. 

“ I have no learning, and you have much," said Milly ; “ I 
am not used to think, and you are always thinking. May I 
tell you why it seems to me a good thing for us, to remember 
wrong that has been done us ? " 


AND THE GHOST’S BARGAIN 


417 


‘ Yes.” 

” That we may forget it.” 

” Pardon me, great Heaven ! ” said Redlaw, lifting up hi^ 
eyes, “ for having thrown away thine own high attribute ! ” 

” And if,” said Milly, “ if your memory should one day 
be restored, as we will hope and pray it may be, would it 
not be a blessing to you to recall at once a wrong and its 
forgiveness ? ” 

He looked at the figure by the door, and fastened his at- 
tentive eyes on her again; a ray of clearer light appeared 
to him to shine into his mind, from her bright face. 

“ He cannot go to his abandoned home. He does not 
seek to go there. He knows that he could only carry shame 
and trouble to those he has so cruelly neglected; and that 
the best reparation he can make them now, is to avoid them. 
A very little money carefully bestowed, would remove him 
to some distant place, where he might live and do no wrong, 
and make such atonement as is left within his power for the 
wrong he has done. To the unfortunate lady who is his 
wife, and to his son, this would be the best and kindest boon 
that their best friend could give them — one too that they need 
never know of ; and to him, shattered in reputation, mind, 
and body, it might be salvation.” 

He took her head between his hands, and kissed it, and 
said : “ It shall be done. I trust to you to do it for me, now 
and secretly f and to tell him that I would forgive him, if I 
were so happy as to know for what.” 

As she rose, and turned her beaming face towards the fallen 
man, implying that her mediation had been successful, he 
advanced a step, and without raising his eyes, addressed him- 
self to Redlaw. “ You are so generous,” he said, ‘‘ — you ever 
were — that you will try to banish your rising sense of retri- 
bution in the spectacle that is before you. I do not try to 
banish it from myself, Redlaw. If you can, believe me.” 

The Chemist entreated Milly, by a gesture, to come nearer 
to him; and, as he listened, looked in her face, as if to find 
in it the clue to what he heard. 

“ I am too decayed a wretch to make professions ; I rec- 
ollect my own career too well, to array any such before you. 
But from the day on which I made my first step downward, 


THE HAUNTED MAN 


418 

in dealing falsely by you, I have gone down with a certain, 
steady, doomed progression. That, I say.” 

Redlaw, keeping her close at his side, turned his face 
towards the speaker, and there was sorrow in it. Something 
like mournful recognition too. 

“ I might have been another man, my life might have been 
another life, if I had avoided that first fatal step. I don’t 
know that it would have been. I claim nothing for the pos- 
sibility. Your sister is at rest, and better than she could 
have been with me, if I had continued even what you thought 
me: even what I once supposed myself to be.” 

Redlaw made a hasty motion with his hand, as if he would 
have put that subject on one side. 

“ I speak,” the other went on, “ like a man taken from the 
grave. I should have made my own grave, last night, had it 
not been for this blessed hand.” 

“ O dear, he likes me too I ” sobbed Milly, under her 
breath. “ That’s another ! ” 

“ I could not have put myself in your way, last night, even 
for bread. But, to-day, my recollection of what has been 
is so strongly stirred, and is presented to me, I don’t know 
how, so vividly, that I have dared to come at her suggestion, 
and to take your bounty, and to thank you for it, and to beg 
you, Redlaw, in your dying hour, to be as merciful to me in 
your thoughts, as you are in your deeds.” 

He turned towards the door, and stopped a moment on his 
way forth. 

“ I hope my son may interest you, for his mother’s sake. 
I hope he may deserve to do so. Unless my life should be 
preserved a long time, and I should know that I have not 
misused your aid, I shall never look upon him more.” 

Going out, he raised his eyes to Redlaw for the first time. 
Redlaw, whose steadfast gaze was fixed upon him, dreamily 
held out his hand. He returned and touched it — little more — 
with both his own; and bending down his head, went slowly 
out. 

In the few moments that elapsed, while Milly silently took 
him to the gate, the Chemist dropped into his chair, and cov- 
ered his face with his hands. Seeing him thus, when she 
came back, accompanied by her husband and his father (who 


AND THE GHOST’S BARGAIN 419 

were both greatly concerned for him), she avoided dis- 
turbing him, or permitting him to be disturbed; and kneeled 
down near the chair to put some warm clothing on the 
boy. 

“ That’s exactly where it is. That’s what I always say, 
father ! ” exclaimed her admiring husband. “ There’s a 
motherly feeling in Mrs. William’s breast that must and will 
have went!”’ 

“ Ay, ay,” said the old man ; “ you’re right. My son 
William’s right I ” 

It happens all for the best, Milly dear, no doubt,” said 
Mr. William, tenderly, “ that we have no children of our 
own ; and yet I sometimes wish you had one to love and 
cherish. Our little dead child that you built such hopes upon, 
and that never breathed the breath of life — it has made you 
quiet-like, Milly.” 

“ I am very happy in the recollection of it, William dear,” 
she answered. “ I think of it every day.” 

“ I was afraid you thought of it a good deal.” 

Don’t say, afraid ; it is a comfort to me ; it speaks to me 
in so many ways. The innocent thing that never lived on 
earth, is like an angel to me, William.” 

“ You are like an angel to father and me,” said Mr. 
William, softly. I know that.” 

When I think of all those hopes I built upon it, and the 
many times I sat and pictured to myself the little smiling 
face upon my bosom that never lay there, and the sweet eyes 
turned up to mine that never opened to the light,” said Milly, 
“ I can feel a greater tenderness, I think, for all the disap- 
pointed hopes in which there is no harm. When I see a beau- 
tiful child in its fond mother’s arms, I love it all the better, 
thinking that my child might have been like that, and might 
have made my heart as proud and happy.” 

Redlaw raised his head, and looked towards her. 

All through life, it seems by me,” she continued, to tell 
me something. For poor neglected children, my little child 
pleads as if it were alive, and had a voice I knew, with which 
to speak to me. When I hear of youth in suffering or shame, 
I think that my child might have come to that, perhaps, and 
that God took it from me in his mercy. Even in age and 


THE HAUNTED MAN 


420 

grey hair, such as father’s, it is present; saying that it too 
might have lived to be old, long and long after you and I 
were gone, and to have needed the respect and love of 
younger people.” 

Her quiet voice was quieter than ever, as she took her 
husband’s arm, and laid her head against it. 

“ Children love me so, that sometimes I half fancy — it’s a 
silly fancy, William — they have some way I don’t know of, 
of feeling for my little child, and me, and understanding why 
their love is precious to me. If I have been quiet since, I 
have been more happy, William, in a hundred ways. Not 
least happy, dear, in this — that even when my little child was 
born and dead but a few days, and I was weak and sorrow- 
ful, and could not help grieving a little, the thought arose, 
that if I tried to lead a good life, I should meet in Heaven a 
bright creature, who would call me. Mother ! ” 

Redlaw fell upon his knees, with a loud cry. 

“ O Thou,” he said, who through the teaching of pure 
love, hast graciously restored me to the memory which was 
the memory of Christ upon the Cross, and of all the good 
who perished in His cause, receive my thanks, and bless 
her!” 

Then, he folded her to his heart; and Milly, sobbing more 
than ever, cried, as she laughed, “ He is come back to him- 
self! He likes me very much indeed, too! Oh, dear, dear, 
dear me, here’s another ! ” 

Then, the student entered, leading by the hand a lovely girl, 
who was afraid to come. And Redlaw so changed towards 
him, seeing in him and his youthful choice, the softened 
shadow of that chastening passage in his own life, to which, 
as to a shady tree, the dove so long imprisoned in his soli- 
tary ark might fly for rest and company, fell upon his neck, 
entreating them to be his children. 

Then, as Christmas is a time in which, of all times in the 
year, the memory of every remediable sorrow, wrong, and 
trouble in the world around us, should be active with us, not 
less than our own experiences, for all good, he laid his hand 
upon the boy, and, silently calling Him to witness who laid 
His hand on children in old time, rebuking, in the majesty 


AND THE GHOST’S BARGAIN 


421 

of his prophetic knowledge, those who kept them from Him, 
vowed to protect him, teach him, and reclaim him. 

Then, he gave his right hand cheerily to Philip, and said 
that they would that day hold a Christmas dinner in what 
used to be, before the ten poor gentlemen commuted, their 
great Dinner Hall; and that they would bid to it as many of 
that Swidger family, who, his son had told him, were so numer- 
ous that they might join hands and make a ring round Eng- 
land, as could be brought together on so short a notice. 

And it was that day done. There were so many Swidgers 
there, grown up and children, that an attempt to state them 
in round nnmbers might engender doubts, in the distrustful, 
of the veracity of this history. Therefore the attempt shall 
not be made. But there they were, by dozens and scores — 
and there was good news and good hope there, ready for 
them, of George, who had been visited again by his father 
and brother, and by Milly, and again left in a quiet sleep. 
There, present at the dinner, too, were the Tetterbys, including 
young Adolphus, who arrived in his prismatic comforter, in 
good time for the beef. Johnny and the baby were too late, 
of course, and came in all on one side, the one exhausted, 
the other in a supposed state of double-tooth; but that was 
customary, and not alarming. 

It was sad to see the child who had no name or lineage, 
watching the other children as they played, not knowing how 
to talk with them, or sport with them, and more strange to 
the ways of childhood than a rough dog. It was sad, though 
in a different way, to see what an instinctive knowledge the 
youngest children there, had of his being different from all 
the rest, and how they made timid approaches to him with 
soft words and touches, and with little presents, that he might 
not be unhappy. But he kept by Milly, and began to love 
her — that was another, as she said! — and, as they all liked 
her dearly, they were glad of that, and when they saw him 
peeping at them from behind her chair, they were pleased 
that he was so close to it. 

All this, the Chemist, sitting with the student and his bride 
that was to be, and Philip, and the rest, saw. 

Some people have said since, that he only thought what has 


THE HAUNTED MAN 


422 

been herein set down; others, that he read it in the fire, one 
winter night about the twilight time; others, that the Ghost 
was but the representation of his gloomy thoughts, and Milly 
the embodiment of his better wisdom. / say nothing. 

— Except this. That as they were assembled in the old 
Hall, by no other light than that of a great fire (having dined 
early), the shadows once more stole out of their hiding-places, 
and danced about the room, showing the children marvellous 
shapes and faces on the walls, and gradually changing what 
was real and familiar there, to what was wild and magical. 
But that there was one thing in the Hall, to which the eyes of 
Redlaw, and of Milly and her husband, and of the old man, 
and of the student, and his bride that was to be, were often 
turned, which the shadows did not obscure or change. Deep- 
ened in its gravity by the firelight, and gazing from the dark- 
ness of the panelled wall like life, the sedate face in the 
portrait, with the beard and rufiP, looked down at them from 
under its verdant wreath of holly, as they looked up at it ; and, 
clear and plain below, as if a voice had uttered them, were 
the words, 

Itorb, ileep mp Jfflemorp (!lmn 


THE END 




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